From Pest to Pet

The sandal eating pest from last week never went home. The neighbors were moving, and apparently they didn't want the little guy, so now he's part of our family. It would be pushing karma too far not to rename the pooch, not to mention the embarrassment that would be caused if/when my advisor meets him. So I'd like to introduce everyone to Bruno.

Bruno is named after the noble hound from Cinderella, a movie we watch a lot of around here lately. He's not brown, but he's not red enough or big enough to be Clifford. The only other dog we see frequently on television is the overweight and troublesome Ferdinand from Tom & Jerry: The Movie, which isn't a good choice. I can only hope that if I'm ever locked in the attic room of my chateau by my evil stepmother that he'll live up to his name and come to my rescue.

Karma owes me this one

The neighbors in the next duplex have a new puppy. They've gone through a full grown pit bull (the scariest looking teddy bear of a dog I've ever met), a pit bull puppy (very cute with very sharp teeth), and some mop looking mutts. I think the moppy mutts are still around and are inside dogs, so I just don't see them much.

The latest arrival is a black retriever-looking puppy that is overly energetic and can't be bothered to stay put in his own yard. Just this morning I've had to take a bag of my trash away from him, rescue Lidia's garden shoes from his backyard, chase him out of my backyard as he was trying to steal my garden shoes, and finally rescue him from my backyard as he had stolen one of my shoes but was holding it sideways and couldn't slip back through the gate. And that's all just in the last hour.

I was determined to be the tough guy and teach the pooch to stay on his own turf, but you can see by my letting him out of my own yard because he was whining that the puppy has already won. So now I need to name this guy since I never see the neighbors. One of the unwritten laws of grad school is that you should do nothing to insult/mock/parody your advisor lest the academic gods rain down busy work and extra years of studies. I'm working on year nine of something that should have taken six years, so it's clear that the academic gods are already punishing me. Besides, I could think of no better name for someone that is constantly annoying me with busy work while at the same time doing nothing that I want him to do.

At least I can work on training the puppy.