The newest Howard I'm talking about is not me. This newest Howard isn't even Travis' new cousin who was born a few days after our wedding. This newest Howard is our new puppy we finally got to pick up. Travis I decided to kick off married life by immediately jumping into the chaos that is owning a puppy because we couldn't stand the calm that is not having a wedding to plan. We just brought home a new 16 week old English Mastiff puppy. He is already about fifty pounds, twice the size of Roxi, nearing on half my size. We have named him Schrodinger (we had to go with a nerdy name) and call him Dinger for short.
 |
| See how adorable he is?? |
Now when we picked him up we had all our suitcases from the wedding, honeymoon, and the last work hitch,a kennel and obviously, Roxi in the car with us. At this point Roxi is well adjusted to travel and was only a little disgruntled about having traveled on a plane again but otherwise she was calm and ready for a quiet drive home (haha, joke's on her). So we pull up to the breeder's house where the big version of Dinger (his father, Bounce) was running around as well as a couple other little dogs and another puppy. We went inside and picked up Dinger (literally, Travis had to crawl under the table and pick Dinger up as he was not convinced he wanted to go with us). Then as Travis was attempting to climb into the drivers side with Dinger, Bounce was attempting to climb in the passengers side with me to visit Roxi. The whole time Bounce was making these high pitched sad dog noises that I didn't expect from such a big guy as he made a desperate attempt to see Roxi. It was hysterical. But we managed to make it in the car without shutting a mastiff head in the door and were accompanied by the correct two dogs. Dinger was clearly a little nervous because he peed on my lap not two minutes into the four hour long drive. We tried to stop right there and I got out of the car with Dinger. Almost immediately I realized that this was a mistake as we both landed in a mud puddle. So back into the car it was. I figured he's peed once and he was done and I'd just change my clothes when we stopped for lunch. How sadly mistaken I was.
We paused a few minutes later for these pictures.
 |
Notice Roxi's stunned look and how Dinger is too big to fit in the frame. I had already been peed on by this point.
|
 |
| Roxi gave us this horrified and betrayed look for much of the ride. I feel she was saying something along the lines of, "You guys are joking right? I thought you said we were getting a puppy not a moose. This is worse than the alpacas." (The alpaca story will be addressed in a separate post.) |
As we continued our drive, I felt Dinger pee a second time. Luckily this was not the first time I've been peed on. It wasn't even the first time I've been peed on by a puppy in a car. As Travis was looking for a good place to stop, somewhere we could walk the dogs a bit and change my pants, I felt Dinger pee yet again. And then another time...and so on. Eventually, I would just pipe up every so often in the middle of conversations with, "Oh...yep....that's warm...there's a little more." Then we discovered that Dinger can fart. Some people might not know that I have hardly any sense of smell. But I could smell this. Man, could I smell it. Welcome to the world of Mastiff farts. It was roll all the windows down and hold your breath potent. But I felt triumphant for the first time in my life I could smell something and identify it without help. After about forty five minutes we found a sort of park type area where we could stop. Poor Dinger was clearly still in nervous pee mode. As Travis tried to pick him up off me and lift him out, more pee happened. It looked like Travis squeezed the pee right out of him. It was raining but I had no choice but to try and change my pants right there. Luckily we had so much luggage that I had plenty of spare pants. I'm very glad no one drove by or they would have had a laugh. As I was hopping around with my pants half on, trying not to fall in the mud, Travis picked something up off the ground and said, "I'm assuming these are probably your underwear you knocked out of your bag." We decided to rearrange the car so both dogs could sit in the back and I could ride without the threat of urine hanging over me. I did have to sit on a trash bag because of the urine underneath me though. The kicker was that Dinger didn't pee when we stopped at the park and he didn't pee the rest of the ride home.
 |
| Stopping at the park. Dinger is clearly already bigger than Roxi, but this picture doesn't do him justice still. You can see his coloring a lot better now though, he is gorgeous. |
 |
| They both liked watching the trusses of the bridge we went over. |
 |
| Eventually little dude passed out like a drunk college kid. |
Even though we've barely had him home, we've already experienced people being amazed at his size and his beauty. And also amazement at his large paws.
 |
| Dinger paws |
 |
| Roxi paws |
Travis adores having a big dog to wrestle with finally. I already managed to capture this set of photos, they basically tell the story without needing captions.
Through all this, Roxi is still continuing to give us evil looks as she sits in her high up arm chair out of the puppy's reach, likely plotting our demise or thinking up a way to ditch Dinger. She's clearly jealous but other than that, they are doing fine together. Dinger really wants to play and cuddle with Roxi but currently she is still being a bitter and grumpy old lady. Dinger is basically a big, slow klutz. For a puppy he is very, very calm. He can be a bit slobbery but he loves to sit on you and give kisses. We're working on making sure the cuddles and kisses don't get too enthusiastically out of control. Like I said, he's already a big boy and his love is overwhelming. Sadly I'll have to leave for work very soon, pretty much the second I get settled in and finish all the unpacking, and I'm sure when I get back Dinger will be even larger than I can expect. I'm sure I will have a new entertaining subject to write about for a while now that he's home. He's very curious, I already had to explain to Dinger that we don't lick the salt lamps or chew on the stormtrooper in the living room. I also envision some stories about him getting stuck in places he things he's small enough for, like under the bed and in Roxi sized kennels.
 |
| This will only work for so long. |
All I can hope now is that Travis learns to pick up his socks before Dinger eats them.
P.S. I promise a wedding post and honeymoon post are in the works soon but they are kind of a big deal so they will take some time to write.
