We Got A New Dog

Backfill: Oct 20 '05
We got a dog. Quite by accident. Went to buy dogfood (for Sheba) and
the Nike Animal Rescue Foundation (Narf! Narf!) was all set up in their
parking lot with the most desirable batch of dogs you've ever seen in
your life. Looked at a lot of border collie and/or australian shepherd
mixes, but when I saw the one that looked a lot like Amber, he made the
others kind of wash out.

Remington is 8 months old (sort of a compromise between a puppy and an
adult); he looks a lot like Amber--claims to be a shepherd/lab mix,
where Amber was shepherd/retriever--but he's got a Don Johnson two-day
shadow, which Amber didn't. I wanted to call him Donjohnson, but he
was already Remington and Jim liked that better, so Remington he'll stay.

Not clear whether he's housebroken (that's a story with a long
background that I'll generously omit for now), but I've been taking him
out back on a regular basis and he does his thing very nicely. Only one
puddle so far in the wrong place and I caught him in process, so we
might get lucky.

No other training that I can tell, although he doesn't fight the leash
like a never-leashed dog would.

Loves to cuddle. Learned to use the doggie door very quickly after his
first view of Sheba passing through it froze him to the spot in
astonishment. (Amber never really learned to use it comfortably even
after 10 years.)

He's zonked out on the floor next to me.

He really likes Jim (I'm just an acceptable substitute when Jim's out of
reach ) and loves to play ball & chase & tug-of-war, all of
those things that Sheba never did.

And Sheba seems to be adjusting as well as one can expect.

(Sorry, Barry, no poodle this time!)

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