Sunday in the Park With...

A digression from "bookishness" today: I thought I'd share some photos of our outing yesterday with our two pups. We're fortunate to have several dog parks in the area, and we visited one of them for the first time yesterday afternoon. Coco (in spite of being the youngest and smallest of our two dogs, and among the smallest at the park), immediately took to the adventure. (That's Coco to the right, being "chauffered" to the park.) She made friends with everyone, dogs and people alike, and ran as fast as her very-close-to-the-ground legs would carry her. Twiggy, a more tentative pup, stuck close to me and Steven, venturing out only when Coco was with him. I was impressed at how well-behaved all the dogs were at the park. None of them showed any aggression, and all welcomed Coco's friendly overtures.

Next we headed downtown for a stroll. We live in a very dog-friendly place, so we can always depend on finding other people walking their dogs downtown on a weekend. Many shops allow pets inside, too. Twiggy and Coco had a great time exploring, then, when we took a break for hot cocoa and cookie, watching dogs and their people walk by.

This "puppy love" is a relatively new state of affairs for me. I've never been much of a pet person, and were it not for Steven, I doubt I'd ever have shared my home with an animal. Once we were married, 'though, Steven started to work on me, slowly but insistently, until I said 'yes' to bringing Twiggy home a little over four years ago. I still have a hard time believing that I agreed to a second dog (might Steven have put something in the water?). Nevertheless, I'm now besotted with Twiggy and Coco, and I've become one of those people to whom I used to feel superior while smiling indulgently as they talked about (and to) their dogs.

There's a moral here somewhere. Maybe one of them is that it's sometimes good to let go of old biases and welcome the unexpected.

Oh, by the way, Twiggy has his own blog (yes, clearly I've gone over the edge). He took a break after Coco arrived -- she's quite a handful -- but he expects to be posting more regularly again.

Getting to know the dog park pups.

Coco makes a (big) friend.

Twiggy makes a friend downtown.

Spring is here (and Steven's behind it).

Coco watches the Sunday strollers.

Twiggy wouldn't mind a bite of Steven's cookie.

Going home after a long day.

An Accelerated Christmas Present

My husband and I have been talking about getting another dog -- more specifically, another shih tzu. But we'd decided (or at least I'd decided) that we'd wait until the spring or summer when my life was a little bit hectic. Puppies take big chunks of time to housetrain and to acclimate to new surroundings -- time that I don't feel I have right now. So much for the best laid plans...

We picked up Coco (short for Coco Chanel, of course) on Dec 22d and she's settled right in. The ambivalent one (besides me, for a while) is her 3-year-old "older brother" -- our other shih tzu, Twiggy (so named because he's never seen a twig or leaf he didn't want to bring into the house). He's been very gentle -- he seems to understand that the puppy's size merits that -- but he's clearly more subdued, and I think he misses the freedom to roam at will without Coco nipping at his heels and being (he must think), generally a pest. Coco, meanwhile, already thinks she owns the place.

Here's some pix of the new addition, and of Twiggy, who for a 15-lb dog, looks gigantic next to tiny 3-lb Coco.

Coco

We used to think of Twiggy as a small dog, but next to 8-week-old Coco, he seems huge!

Twiggy is spending more time up on his window seat these days...

Introducing...BookPuppy!

I had a call yesterday from a delightful friend with whom I hadn't spoken for a while. We're both very attached to our dogs -- she has two rambunctious standard poodles; I have the friendliest puppy in the world. Reminiscing about this and that, including her cute new car, which has a license plate that references her puppy-love, reminded me that I'd yet to put up pix of our own pup. The first one is Twiggy when we brought him home at 3 months (yep, that's his name, no relation to the 60s supermodel of the same name); the other photo is more recent, taken at his favorite spot, the window seat in our kitchen. Sitting here lets him look out on our front yard and the street beyond, so that he can be the first to greet anyone who walks by.

Before we got Twiggy, I'd never been much of a 'dog person' -- or a 'pet person' for that matter -- but now I'm no different from the dog lovers whom I used to make fun of for speaking to their dogs in baby talk. Sigh. One of the first books I made, a very simple accordion, was , in fact, a book about Twiggy. So much for being a serious book artist, I thought at the time. Sigh again. You'll be glad to know I've made more books since then.