Teddy plays nice

Idiot Dog Teddy gets along well with people. Other dogs though, not so much. He grew up with a ridiculously high strung little yappy dog named Belle, and to his credit, he never ate her.

Here Belle is showing her stunning intellect by laying under the bed.

IDT also got along OK with my parents little dog named Issa, as long as we carefully introduced them.

Here my dad is being the equivalent of a demilitarized zone between Belle and Issa (who actually got along fine, as long as everyone knew that the house revolved around Belle).

But that's been about it. We tried to introduce him to our house sitter's wonderful dog, but that went badly - our theory is that since he grew up with a small dog, he can tolerate them fairly well, but medium to large dogs are still on his list of the most evil things on earth (along with squirrels, cats, bugs, and some mildly threatening leaves).

So when I came home Monday and saw a strange dog in the house, it was a surprise. Even more surprising was that IDT didn't seem to care.

Meet Sophia. She is Aubri's remarkably well behaved dog. She's not a big dog, but not a tiny one either (and certainly not a yappy one - I have yet to hear her bark), and IDT is fine with her.

He is curious, but Sophia just ignores him, which perplexes IDT a bit.

There is no way this earmuff could be put on IDT.

Riley, on the other hand, will try anything.

Even The Boy gets along with Sophia.

And finally here is Aubri and Sophia.

One thing that has come out of this is that Mrs Notthat is starting to talk more about getting another dog. A cousin in Arkansas has a dog that had a litter of Redbone puppies. I am positive that if we lived a bit closer we would already have one of these. And a local friend of hers has a dog similar to Sophia that also had a litter of puppies. Fortunately the friend intends to keep the puppies, but we all know how things can change once the puppies get a bit bigger and ornerier.

In the meantime, we are currently suffering through a bitter cold snap that has left IDT's water dish frozen the past two mornings.

And even worse, rain is predicted for Saturday's group walk. It will be interesting to see how this goes.

Maybe we will be too busy dealing with a puppy by then to go out walking in the rain.

Heavy sigh...

That's it - piddle along...