While he looks dead, he’s really just about as relaxed as a dog can get. Sound asleep on his back in his crate, little Bottie is settling in just fine.
Bottie is our latest foster dog through Desert Labrador Retreiver Rescue. He’s just over 6 months old, so he’s still really just a puppy, though he’s already 67 pounds, and taller than our three-year-old lab, Magic. Bottie’s going to be a huge lab, well over 100 pounds, when he reaches maturity.
He is quite a little dickens. He’s rather like a headstrong teenager right now. He likes to chew on things, and seems unable to generalize catagories of things for chewing and things not for chewing; as a result he just tries everything and we follow him around yelling, "No!" Yesterday, I left him unsupervised for a few moments and he went into our bedroom, dragged a hardcover copy of "Oryx and Crake" by Atwood off the nightstand and ate the front cover. We try to be confident he’ll grow out of this kind of thing.
He’s a very bold and fearless dog. The only time I’ve seen him scared is when I first met him. I had just come home from work and my wife had already brought him home. When I walked in he huddled against Lauren and peed himself a little. Even that might not have been fear, per se, just the semblance of it. Such self-urination is common when an immature animal greets a dominant adult animal; it’s a sumbissive gesture more than actual fear. Now, Bottie lies on the rug between the cannister and the wand when my wife vaccuums. He even makes her push his paws out of the way with the carpet attachment. Meanwhile our adult dog is off cowering in the other room…
The one thing that I don’t like about Bottie isn’t his fault. It’s his name. It’s a pretty stupid name to begin with, but it also has a conotation of botflies for me. Really grusome parasites. I just call him Buddy. He doesn’t seem to mind. Dogs seldom sweat the small stuff.
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