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Uncertain Principles

Physics, Politics, Pop Culture

Thursday, August 21, 2003

Nice Doggie

As noted on Kate's LiveJournal, we got a dog yesterday. Having been beaten to a couple of promising candidates, I decided to take the afternoon off, and swing by a local shelter and check out a couple of dogs that looked interesting on their web list.

Let me just note that I really don't like those places. It's so pathetic-- the dogs are all in concrete kennels in one big room, and whenever a shelter volunteer would come in, they'd all commence baying piteously, in hopes of being let out of their cages, producing a deafening racket. The worst ones are the senior dogs-- the eight, nine, ten-year old dogs, who just look sort of resigned to their fate. It's a terrible scene-- you want to take all of them home, which is, of course, impossible.

Anyway, I ended up really liking one of the dogs I'd gone there to see, so I brought her home. She's a German Shepherd mix (mixed with what, I don't know), mostly black and tan, with a white spot on her chest. Her right rear paw is deformed, but it hardly even slows her down, and she's got tan spots over her eyes that give her a perpetually quizzical expression. Unsurpisingly for a shelter dog, she's sort of pathetically needy right at the moment-- if I stop petting her for even a few minutes, she gets antsy, and comes over to beg for affection (though she's (finally) wearing down a little today, and may be going to sleep, which would let me get some work done). She's also a little antsy in general-- she was upset by the painters who are working on our house today, so I brought her in to the office, where hammerin sounds from the remodeling going on downstairs set off a barking fit a little while ago. Hopefully, she'll get past both of those issues as she gets more comfortable in her new home.

For now, though, she's yet another factor that will contribute to a general lack of uncertainly principled blog posts in the immediate future.

Also, name suggestions are welcome in comments-- the previous owners (who gave her up due to allergy issues) called her "Princess," which might work for a Maltese or some such thing, but doesn't really fit a raggedy-looking shepherd mix. We're leaning toward "Emmy," for no particular reason, but there's still time to come up with a better name.

Posted at 1:20 PM | link | follow-ups |