the sheltiechick blog

Two Little Puppies

If you’re having a bad day, I challenge you to do this:
Imagine a sheltie puppy. A pretty small one – tightly curled up it’s just about smaller than a volleyball. It’s fuzzy and fluffy, covered in super soft downy puppy hair. They go “yarf yarf!” in little high-pitched squeaks instead of barking.
Got the mental image?
Now double it.

TWO little puppies. Soft and snuggly, they fit so nicely in your arms. One of them is a little snotty and every time you pet her she goes “AAAARRR RARR RARR” like she’s going to bite your hand off with her tiny (but sharp!) little puppy teeth. The other one keeps giving you kisses as you hold her, and you can feel her little puppy tail wagging away in your arms.

This was my yesterday.
It was a wonderful, wonderful evening.

No, neither of the puppies are mine nor will they be. Mom desperately wants one of them, though. She couldn’t stop talking about them all night long. Auggie rode home snuggled up in my lap because I was so very nostalgic for the first day I brought him home, a small fluffy ball of puppy.
I put Auggie down next to them (they were in an ex-pen at first) and let him sniff them through the bars. He wasn’t very interested. I picked one of them up and held her out to him outside of the pen and he still wasn’t very interested. He went off exploring J’s yard, peed on a tree, and looked for forgotten cookies in the grass while we talked about the dogs. I got to touch tiny little puppy feet and itty bitty puppy toenails, look at teeny tiny puppy teeth, feel little puppy ears… oh my God, now *I* have puppy fever.
After agility practice J got the puppies out of the ex-pen and let them prowl around the yard with Auggie. NOW he was interested in them. They were playful and feisty and that got him all excited. He bowled one of them over (she was being called Bullwinkle) playing chase, it was hilarious. I opened his water bottle and started to pour water into his travel bowl, and he was drinking from the stream coming from the bottle (as usual) – and Bullwinkle came over to see what he was doing, and he backed up to let her drink from his water bottle! It was soooo cute, this tiny puppy with her nose shoved into his water bottle and Auggie waiting patiently for her to finish so he could get a drink next…

Now I have a pretty good idea of how Auggie will react once I bring a puppy home. He acted much like I expected… we just have to make sure he plays gentle, because I don’t think he realizes they’re very small and he needs to be careful!