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And the boy didn’t like it

Neato and Evil Baby are not yet friends. I mean, Neato doesn’t want to make any more friends at the best of times, but he especially does not want to make friends with Evil Baby. Neato holds a grudge like I hold onto an ice cream sandwich, and as Evil Baby bit him in the face on Day One, and has subsequently beat him up for walking past a toy the Baby was playing with, he is not inclined to shift his position on the matter. I don’t really blame him, it’s taking me some time to come around to liking Evil Baby too.

Fortunately for Jude, Oy DOES like him and wants to play with him ALL THE TIME.

The irony here is that the point of getting another dog was so that Oy had someone to play with that he would be less likely to accidentally damage. He is a very gentle dog, but he is also an adolescent border collie and he gets amped up and sometimes he accidentally hurts Neato or Addy. So my plan was to get a dog in the 20ish lb range – sturdy enough to take rough play with Oy, small enough to be able to lug around under an armpit if need be. Instead I got 11 lbs of Evil Baby who plays ROUGH, but now I have THREE dogs that Oy could accidentally injure. I have already extricated Jude from a potentially scary situation where Oy was thrashing him back and forth by his collar. Jude was no worse for wear, and went back for seconds, but I didn’t like, and don’t want it to happen again. Jude needs to play with someone his own size, and the dogs his size in my household don’t care for him, so he’s going to have to move along to a more appropriate household.

Oy will be bummed though, because he really likes having a playmate to roughhouse with.

The crazy thing about Jude is that he can get tackled by 50lbs of Oy and come up snapping like an alligator, but if I open a bag of chips “wrong” it spooks the heck out of him. He is a lot more confident on his (current) home turf now, but he is overall a sorta spooky/nervous dog and I want … a “Bro” dog. I want Mr. Woo back. I want a stable, social, solid, go everywhere medium sized mutt without any pit bull/power breed (sorry not sorry), terrier (even less sorry) or shepherd or husky in it (OR MALINOIS). I don’t even know where to find those anymore, I feel like we neutered them right out of existence.

He still reminds me remarkably of Fae from time to time, which is both startling and sad in equal measure. However, he is not Fae and I know better, and should not have adopted him. But maybe you should adopt him!

It’s not like I hate him, or even dislike him, but I am not at a place in my life where I want a million dogs at a time anymore and I can’t keep him “just because.” I’d like one more dog that is the right match, and not replace my oldies when I lose them, and get myself down to 2 or 3 at a time only. I am not getting younger, rentals aren’t getting any easier to find and I am tired.

But if I could clone Oy … in like, half size. I LOVE Oy. I love him so much I can’t even begin to tell you. He is just, like, my souldog. He and I really are Ka-tet.

Not unlike Addy and her beloved pear. My pear tree is FULL of pears. Hundreds of pears. But in the tree of pears, Addy found The One.

They enjoy intense conversation:

But they have a playful side together:

You can see the love as she gazes as The Pear:

And they enjoy quiet moments, laying in the grass, finding the shapes of their love in the clouds:

My wish for you is that you find your Pear. I think mine might be Oy, which is a little unfortunate, because he doesn’t even have a job or anything. But damn, is he ever good lookin’!

(but if you know anyone looking for a small dog, who is very cuddly and comical, but needs a little confidence building and some remedial work around resources and other dogs, hmu)

There aren’t numbers high enough to count the ways.

You were a perfect boy – smart, funny, sensitive, loyal and full of enthusiasm.

Your spirit was always bright, but your body failed you. I did my best, and I didn’t want to fail you too. So when your legs stopped working, when your arthritis became too much; when your earthly trappings became too painful, I had to let you go.

The first photo of you

And the last

And so many wonderful memories in between.

I will love you and miss you forever, my sweet Dexter “Long-stride” Morgan. Take my love with you, and share it with your brothers and sisters who left before you.

Dexter

August 23, 2009 – May 10, 2025

in the history of Wootube Family Photos.

Apparently we have more work to do on sit-stay … and down-stay … just on “stay” in general. Every time I had to go put him back everyone moved, because they were all “oooh you ruined the photo, you’re gonna be in trouble” and they all got up and shuffled away. And when I put the rest of them back in position, Oy was all “you’re boring AF” and wandered off. And no chance at all of getting Dexter in there at all. This masterpiece took like 20 minutes to achieve lol.

Oy is just over 4 months old and has been with me for just over four weeks now. He is officially All Legs:

…with a dash of ears thrown in for balance:

We have conquered, finally, much of the freaking out when he is confined and/or I am not within his eyeline. He now stays quietly in his pen with his munchies and mostly just naps; he even goes in on his own when he sees me get the frozen slow feeder out. But you will NEVER catch him in there if it is open and he is free to roam around. I am still not allowed to shut a door in his face though, and I shamelessly use this to my advantage when I let him outside for an 11PM pee and he thinks maybe we should be going to play frisbee instead and will neither pee nor come back inside, and he knows full well I can’t come get him because I’m in my slippers and the yard is muddy. I tell him FINE and shut the back door. Once he put on his Determined Face and stayed out there for about 4 minutes (for 3.5 minutes, he tried to CHEW THROUGH THE BUNGIE CORDS HOLDING THE GATE SHUT BECAUSE MAYBE FRISBEE) but he caved before I did and came screaming for the back door. I know this makes me a bad trainer, but he is exhausting and I am picking my battles.

He is MENTAL for the disc. We have had a couple of power struggles where he blows off his recall to race to the spot on the empty lot next door where we play disc. We had one today. I sat down on a log and counted to some astronomical number in an attempt to control my RAGE before he came back to see what was taking the STUPID lady with her STUPID rules and her STUPID slow walking so long, and I had calmed down enough to reward and praise him, and then he was good about coming back on the walk after that. This dog has FIERCELY SERIOUS IDEAS and apparently they are mostly in opposition to my stupid and boring ideas.

He is getting pretty good at catching rollers, and he always brings the disc back, and he has even learned “swing,” which is go around behind me and take off in front of me for the disc and that’s kinda rad, but I do not want him obsessed with disc like Maisie is obsessed with … anything I will throw, so I make sure that we do not play every day – sometimes we just walk around the properties for an hour instead. And we always go for a walk before disc and after disc too. I want him to be able to enjoy more than one thing in life!

He also went through a little period where he was sort of guardy of the disc with the other dogs, and as soon as he would air snap at one of his siblings I would shove the disc into my coat (by the by, so many muddy sweatshirts and the inside of my coat as a result) and walk off, so he has stopped doing that. We are not at the stage where he won’t try to outrun one of the other dogs to get it before they do, but at least he will share now.

Also someone mentioned on one of my videos that they didn’t realize Neato was so tiny. Neato is approximately the size of a regulation frisbee:

Oy is a bit of a tough nut to crack, not gonna lie. I mean he is a normal puppy who gallumps around and trips over his own feet and plays silly games with toys, but there is a serious, very determined dog in there waiting in the wings. A constant undercurrent of “f*ck around and find out” if you will. I mean if I am being honest, I guess I got what I wanted when I went and bought myself a puppy from serious cattle lines, but if I am also being honest, sometimes I am afraid he’s going to best me. Sometimes when I am trying to elicit a specific behaviour from him, the look he gives me makes me feel very small and silly.

He lacks that spirit of joie de vivre that my other pups have had in abundance. Everything are serious and must be contemplated – he is the polar opposite of “act now, deal with the consequences later” that Dexter embodied. I wonder often if he even likes me, or if I am just the dumb obstacle that stands between him and basically everything that he would like to do.

When I look back at photos of Dexter as a puppy he always looks like a happy dork. Oy always looks like if I don’t hide the knives there’s a possibility he may stab me to death in my sleep and the only reason he hasn’t is because he can’t throw a disc himself. He Are Serious Puppy.

Then again maybe I am just overthinking it, because he can also be a happy dork.

Once he has grown up a little more he is going to go meet some sheepies and see if his stylish self will transfer to actual work.

In the meantime, I am trying to just enjoy him as much as I can. He’s growing up so fast and I really do love him a lot.

Pretty sure his ears are going to be airplanes, but they are doing some seriously entertaining things right now!