Fragments From Floyd

Laughing Dog: The new camera has a fast shutter and focus, and so I've entered a new era of puppy picture-taking. Now, even if he is wiggling, cavorting, running or jumping after butterflies, I can bring in acceptable pictures of Tsuga the Barricuda.

Here's one of the first. I was down on one knee calling the dog, who would not come on command. Suddenly he turned and raced toward me. A split second after this image was snapped, I was cleaning dog spit off my UV Haze filter. (Warning: Objects in the viewfinder are closer than they may appear.)

Think We'll Keep Him: There have been times--many times--that I just was not sure if we had not made a mistake, picking "Number 3" from the litter of seven males. Maybe "Number 5" would have been more what we were expecting after all. We considered taking him back in the cover of darkness to leave him on the doorstep of the house where he was born. This is not what we had expected of our third labrador retriever, even if Tsuga was our first of the yellow variety. How different could they be, one pure-bred from another? We assumed our new dog would be a blend of our former pups, Buster and Zachary. Wasn't this, after all, the point? Wasn't this the reason why a person would pay good money for a mutt otherwise obtainable for free from the pound? The predictable good nature and tractability of the pure breed was what we were paying for when we bought another lab.

T-dog turns ten months this week. Somewhere along about month six--after he lost all his shark-sharp baby teeth--he got nice. Well, nicer. And noticeably more aware of things in general and of our pleasure and displeasure with his behaviors in particular. While he still misbehaves when the rare visitors come--out of unbridled glee and exuberance, not meanness or aggression--he has mellowed considerably. He's is learning right from wrong, and more wants to please than to follow his own instincts and agenda. Except when it comes to turkey poop. But we won't go there. He's accepted that I am the Alpha Male and the other one is the Food Lady and his walking buddy, and we are both part of his tiny pack. I think he knows how good he has it here and has decided to stay.