My New Baby

Diana Wishes to Announce the Adoption of

Princess

variously known as Princess Principessa, Miss Priss, Hey You, Good Girl, Bad Girl, and (when she's REALLY bad), Sheila [my ex's dog's name].

Ever since my beloved Stormy died, I have planned to get another dog, if only to keep Buster company. I combed Petfinder.com assiduously in search of the perfect dog: small (25-30 pounds), male, housebroken if possible, not a puppy. I set my sights on several, only to have them adopted out from under me (not that I mind them going to good homes, of course!) Every weekend I had a free day, I would be down at the Petsmart across from Chapel Hill Mall looking at the rescue dogs organizations like Paws and Prayers and Heaven Can Wait.

So last Saturday I brought Princess home. They describe her as a Sheltie mix, but I don't see it.

Note how she completely fails to match any of my criteria - she's a girl, just a year old, so practically a puppy, and although she weighed 30 pounds the day I adopted her, as of today she's up to 36.6 pounds and she's still sucking down the Dad's Trail Mix like she thinks it's her last bowl.

Oh wait - she does meet one criterion: she is housebroken. The house she's broken is mine.

No, that's a calumny (I just couldn't resist the joke). She's actually very well behaved and I couldn't be more pleased with that. She's had a couple of accidents in the house, but they were clearly the result of us not understanding each other's signals - Princess is definitely a lady and she doesn't want to do her business in the house.

According to Paws and Prayers, her previous owners surrendered her to the pound because she had the effrontery to get fleas. And you know, once a dog has fleas there's nothing you can do about that. You just have to throw the dog back and fish for another one.

I was a bit concerned about how Buster would react to having another dog sharing his house and his human. At first this seemed justified; for the first day he did nothing but try to fornicate with her. Thankfully, this behavior gradually tapered off, and they are doing very well together:


The only problem is she shows signs of being too darn smart for me!