Puppy Update
The parents took the dogs to the vet yesterday, and they had their final “puppy” shots. They both have apparently doubled their weight since my parents got them, and based on the phone calls I have had with my mother lately, they are firmly into their “barking” phase. I can also report that my mother can not complete one sentence on the phone before having to attend to an ornery JRT. Most calls, she gets halfway through a sentence, I hear some gasp of horror followed by a “GINNY!,” and then the line goes dead. At any rate, some pics:
Guesly appears to be quite the ham, as he is always posing in every picture my dad sends me. It really is kind of funny, because our last JRT, Russell, was the least photogenic dog on the planet. Every picture he was half in the frame, and just looked unattractive (by JRT standards). Guesly, on the other hand, is quite photogenic.
January 29, 2009 9:46 am
Posted in: Dog Blogging
23 Comments
23 Responses
Faux News - January 29, 2009 | 9:56 am · Link
So is the Puppy Terror Alert in your parents’ house permanently at "red" these days? I’d tell them to call DHS, but DHS will probably just refer your parents to Blackwater. Apparently that company has lost a major contract somewhere in the Middle East and can use the money.
TheFountainHead - January 29, 2009 | 10:03 am · Link
Wow, going from a Rush post to a Puppy post is jarring. I like the puppies. Keep the puppies coming. I could use less Rush in my life.
Laura W - January 29, 2009 | 10:04 am · Link
(The parents too the dogs)
Guesly has been my adorable favorite since day one.
I hate barking dogs. I am glad I have no puppies in my life.
You are on your own now with the proofing. I have litter to scoop.
TheFountainHead - January 29, 2009 | 10:10 am · Link
What did I tell ya, Blago’s gonna show up at his impeachment trial after all…
Svensker - January 29, 2009 | 10:12 am · Link
Oooh, the cuteness. Especially that first pic—all tuckered out but maybe there’s another game in the offing…. Don’t you just love puppy bellies?
dr.hypercube - January 29, 2009 | 10:12 am · Link
One bit of free advice for your folks – worth every penny paid for it – if destructive chewing becomes an issue (I know – it’s a long shot), cut the number of chew toys to 3 or less (I’d cut it to 1 toy for each). The rationale – with one ‘OK to chew’ toy, the puppy needs to keep track of one thing. "Is this my Kong? No? Then I’m not allowed to chew it." rather than "Is this my Kong or my duck or my rubber dumbell or my plastic dinosaur or my… Oh, screw it. Chomp." It won’t fix the problem – but it’ll make it easier to train the pups.
Nikki - January 29, 2009 | 10:17 am · Link
In the two pictures you showed us of the litter from which your folks had to choose, Guesly stood out because he was photogenically posed for the camera. Check out both of those shots. He’s a natural! The camera loves him!
funluvn - January 29, 2009 | 10:19 am · Link
Those are a couple of little beauties! I’m sure they are keepin’ Moms quite busy.
MH - January 29, 2009 | 10:30 am · Link
I take it Ginny is the tan and Guesly the darker brown?
daryljfontaine - January 29, 2009 | 10:55 am · Link
I understand the "pet precludes conversation" paradigm—my mom had to put her 16yo Siamese to sleep two years back, and went and adopted a beautiful shelter cat she promptly named "Mischief." I warned her at the time she had created a self-fulfilling prophecy… now every phone call is punctuated by yells of unadulterated joy frustrated cat ownership.
D
wonkie - January 29, 2009 | 10:55 am · Link
If these guys run true to JRT form, your mom will be interrupted by mischievious behavior for the rest of their lives.
Don’t get me wrong—I love Jack Russells. However they are one of the most likley to end up in rescue dogs for a reason: not every human has the temperament to love them.
My mutt Blackie is half JRT ( the other half is corgie). He’s old but he is still into dramatics, as terriers tend to be.
Gus - January 29, 2009 | 12:25 pm · Link
Those are some cute pups, but I really don’t envy your folks. One puppy is difficult, two makes it ridiculous, and the fact that they’re JRTs compounds the problem. Keep the pictures coming though.
dr.hypercube - January 29, 2009 | 12:37 pm · Link
@ daryljfontaine – see here for more self-fulfilling pet name fun.
lilly Von Schtupp - January 29, 2009 | 12:45 pm · Link
That second picture is teh cute! So many toys. So little time.
lilly Von Schtupp - January 29, 2009 | 1:13 pm · Link
Just now, while I was admiring the pictures of these two cuties, our new dog, a three year old german shepherd/border collie mix named India escaped from our back yard. She came to the front door but jeez, I’m still shaking! I swear she has super ninja skills that foil our every attempt to keep her in! We’ve nailed everything down. I think she went over the wood pile.
She has matched or exceeded most everything my three teenagers have done.
Ed Drone - January 29, 2009 | 1:47 pm · Link
We have two corgis and they’re into barking something fierce. But we just got something that seems to help (no, not booze—that just makes the barks worse the next morning).
We got a bark-stopper, a small ultrasonic noise machine that responds to barks with bursts of high-pitched sound (the audible portion is a really piercing "beep" that hurts my aged ears and must really be annoying in the upper registers young dogs use. There’s even a push-button feature you can use when they’re doing something else you don’t want—just point the speaker and push the red button.
Best $20 I ever spent (except the $30 1932 Martin guitar, back in the day—ahh, I wish all my guitars came at that price).
And thanks for the chew-toy advice. I’ll try it.
Ed
scruncher - January 29, 2009 | 3:47 pm · Link
I can see by the toy bin that your parents are doing their part to stimulate the economy!
I agree: more puppies, less Rush.
Go Steelers!
R-Jud - January 29, 2009 | 3:59 pm · Link
@lilly Von Schtupp:
What’d she get on her SATs?
AnneLaurie - January 29, 2009 | 4:02 pm · Link
Remember the old Avis ad, "We’re number two, we try harder"? Guesly intends to use charm to get what Ginny gets by being IN CHARGE
Of course at around the 10-month mark, testosterone might upset the Alpha rankings between them… but on the other hand, eight months of practice may have entrenched Ginny’s status permanently. (I have younger sibs who are triplets, and my five-foot-tall sister still bosses the six-foot-tall boys around shamelessly.)
Our next-to-last rescue papillon was an escape artist like that… in fact, we suspect Zevon (the Excitable Boy) ended up in rescue because the people he lived with for 5 years went through one too many oh-my-blood-pressure escapades. Just like the experienced rescue people told us, it does get better (some better) after six months. Don’t overlook the ability of a determined dog to surf up a well-packed snowbank and over the backyard fence, even if the distance between the two seems ‘too far to clear’. And if it’s at all possible, find India some kind of job she can do to burn off her extra energy—one reason dog agility, obedience & rally classes have become popular is that border collies really enjoy putting in hours of practice to shave a few seconds off their run-through, and german shepherds find the dressage-like precision work calming.
KRK - January 29, 2009 | 4:13 pm · Link
Tunch fans want equal coverage.
Krista - January 29, 2009 | 4:55 pm · Link
Oh, what sweet behbehs they are! And yeah, that’s an insane quantity of toys—I can tell that those dogs have a very tough life. ;)
headpan - January 29, 2009 | 6:17 pm · Link
ADORABLE!! My brain hurts from teh cute.
But I hate to tell you, John – It’s starting to sound like the old "child gets supplanted by painfully cute pup" situation. I mean, your mom has already started hanging up on you to tend to Jenny. What next? On your next visit, you may find yourself sleeping in the doggie bed while they hog your room and she cooks them special lamb and rice meals while you have to eat cold Dinty Moore stew out of the can. It’s tragic. I know, cuz it happened to me. :^)
John O - January 29, 2009 | 7:24 pm · Link
I was out of town on a family wedding jaunt a year or so ago, and the two wonderful dogs of the happy couple had been banished to the garage in the new house by the bride.
Yes, I was a little drunk, but I chose to sleep with the boys in the garage and gave up my comfy quarters inside the brand-spankin’ new house, and the dogs were grateful and cuddly and fabulous. A good 10 minutes of blessed head-licking, a couple of spins to get all close to me, and they, and me, were down for the count. They were happier than I was.
Keep the pics coming, John. I just found out 1 out of 3 of my colleagues, including possibly me, would be jobless soon.
Puppies are among the only things keeping me in the game.