Owning a Dog

This is Butter.


Butter is our new dog. Butter came to live with us yesterday morning, when I picked him up (freshly neutered) from the animal shelter.

Conservative Boy picked out Butter’s name. Butter is actually Butter Jr., because Butter is Conservative Boy’s nickname among his high school buddies. So now I live with Butter Sr. and Butter Jr. Who doesn’t like a lot of butter in life? Yum.

Some great alternate names were suggested by my coworkers yesterday in the off chance Butter doesn’t stick. Haha, butter stick. Didn’t mean that at all. But it’s funny.

Parkay. Oleo. Country Crock. I can’t believe it’s not Butter.

I’d hate to have to yell, “I can’t believe it’s not Butter, come here!” though, so I think Country Crock will be my backup name.

Anyhow. In case you couldn’t tell, Butter is a yellow lab. He needs a bath and some more brushing because he’s shedding like a mad man. He also needs fattened up, because he’s insanely skinny. But after that? He’ll be absolutely lovely, won’t he? (I do, however, need to teach him how to sit for photos. Every time I think I have the perfect shot, he runs away at the last second. So I have lots of pictures of Butter’s butt. I’ll work on that this weekend.)


So far Butter has been a relatively good dog. Once he got over his fears of actually coming into the house, he set about exploring almost immediately. And, much to my excitement (because we have no idea how old Butter is, let alone if he’s house trained), he listened relatively well to “sit” and “no” yesterday. And, joy of all joys, he only peed outside!

Butter behaved rather well yesterday while I worked (aside from pulling over a coat tree in my office). All he really wants it attention. Lots of it. He doesn’t have any interest in toys or dog treats or anything of that nature. All he wants is to be petted. Which I can handle. Except it’s hard to pet a dog all day long while you’re trying to type. (If anyone has figured out a good way to do this, let me know.)

Here Butter is trying to distract me from work. Bad dog.


We did discover last night, however, that Butter has no interest in going into his crate when we leave the house or when it’s bedtime. It takes both Conservative Boy and I and all our brute strength to get him in there. Fortunately he’s still a scrawny fella.

I’ve never owned a dog before, so this is going to be a real adventure. Particularly in light of the fact that Butter eats too fast, which led him to puke up some rather unfriendly, whole, bright red pieces of dog food right when we were going to bed last night. Fun.

And he pooped (a lot, because we had yet to get him to poop outside) in the living room this morning in the five minutes C.B. and I were both busy. Now I’m questioning whether I’m cut out for this job. And people my age have kids? Yikes.

Expect to hear more about Butter soon. But I promise, I won’t spend every day yapping about my dog and his exploits, like proud parents do to people who could care less about their kids. Really, I promise.

Oh, but did I mention what Butter just did? It was so cute … (Really. He's snoozing right now and just tipped over. It was cute.)