Deep Dukie

In case you are wondering, I did not think about the unfortunate nickname before I named my dog.  I actually named him before I got him/saw him.  I was thinking about dogs, and I knew I wanted a large one.  So I was wracking my brain for large-dog names, and unbidden, John "The Duke" Wayne came to mind, followed closely by the ambrosia of the south, Duke's Mayonnaise .  It just seemed right somehow.

ANYWAYS...



He's been barking a lot today.  At nothing.  Nothing.  Not an intruder.  Not a rabid animal.  Not even the mail woman.  Nope.  He's growling and barking and prowling all about nothing.  Drives me ca-razy.  He also slimed my leg shortly before writing this, which also irks me, but is not his fault, so I get over that one quickly.  And he stepped on my injured toe, the tip end of which was lost in the Great Bicycle-Trying-Outing of 2011 (results to follow).  And I'm tired (I might have mentioned that below...) so while I'm trying to avoid a "kick the dog" type of day, I'm starting to fail.  I'd go back to bed again, but he'd probably wake me up barking and then you'd be reading tomorrow about my search for a new dog.

So, instead of hating him, I'm going to try and not hate as much celebrate his unique qualities.  Allow me to illustrate.

 This is his poof.  It grows whenever he is attacking or threatening to attack.  

*I'm assuming that it grows when he is attacking, despite the fact that he's never attacked anything other than the food in his bowl*

Fun Fact: When ever he's feeling threatened by, say, a leaf blowing across the neighbor's yard, if I smooth down his poof, he calms considerably.

  

These, Ladies and Gentlemen, are his jowls.  They hold massive amounts of water and slime, a water by-product.  The only part of him that I wanted to be Labrador-like was his lips.  Everything else, I was hoping for Great Dane-esque features.  Nope.  Thems Dane's lips, so they is.

Now I'm going to take him to the lake, and let him run around and get all muddy and hopefully tired, so that he will bark less and sleep more.  Yes, I will have to bathe him, but he's never barked while in the bath, and he can't step on my toe if he's in the tub, and so I feel like it just might work.

Hoping to be in bed by 8,

TFW