You may have noticed the the presence of a dog at the end of my blog post last Thursday; well, even if you didn’t that’s okay — but I think the time has come to introduce the newest member of my family. It’s been 15 years since there was a dog living in my house, so we’re both having an interesting time getting used to things. I adopted him from the local animal shelter and was originally planning to get a smaller dog, but something about his face just caught at my heart. His shelter name was Snuffleupagus (I’m currently calling him Snuffy, but that may change), and he’s a 3-year-old pitbull/Sharpei mix weighing in at 53 pounds (24 kg).

For such a powerful dog, he’s astonishingly well behaved. He’s very polite about taking treats from my hand, and I’ve been able to leave him at home (inside the house with the back door open) without any trouble. The only things he’s destroyed have been the toys I buy him; he loves to chew, and if he can’t break a toy down into its component parts, he’s just not interested. We’ve been going on outings together most days, and I’m currently working on getting him into daycare so he’ll have a chance to play with other dogs as he did at the shelter.

At three years old, he still has loads of energy to run and play; but he’s also very fond of snuggling up with me on the couch. If he can’t get me on my feet for a round of tug-of-war, he’ll bring his toy onto my lap and settle in as a leg warmer. He’s definitely become the bright spot in my life. and ever since bringing him home to my all-too-empty house, a line keeps running through my head that I finally traced back to an episode of Frasier:

Frasier: You know, my Grandmother used to have a cat. A mangy old thing. Kept ruining the furniture and stuff. I asked her why she kept it and she said that maybe it was because she liked having another heartbeat around the house — Dark Victory, S2E24