imbecamiel | Teh cute. It kills. (Reply)

Okay, yes, I am officially killed by teh adorableness. *ded*

And speaking of cute... the litter from which we are (if all goes well!) supposed to get a puppy is due in a little less than a week now! *bounces* I can not wait to actually meet the little ones. \o/

Of course, this means that The Naming Crisis is rapidly coming to a head. You see, around here, naming a pet is a major undertaking, necessitating multiple earnest family discussions, sometimes lasting till midnight or so, in addition to the day-to-day tossing back and forth of ideas. This is A Big Deal.

And we still have no idea what we're going to go with.

Ideally, really, we'd love to come up with another Lord of the Rings-themed name. Trouble is, we're not really particularly fond of most hobbity or dwarvish names for a dog, but the more dignified human and elvish ones tend to be rather a mouthful, and not have any good nicknames. We we've hit a dead end there for the time being.

We've discussed Griffin (or, probably, Gryphon), which I quite like. The guys are kind of "meh" about it, though. They are bound and determined to have a dog named Cooper (they actually wanted to name Strider that). Which Nef and I have declared is Not gonna happen. I'm actually terribly fond of Sherlock as a dog's name, but it, unfortunately, has some rather negative past connotations - some years ago, after our neighbor's kids spent most of a summer listening to our dad read nearly the entire collection of Sherlock Holmes tales aloud to us, they named their new dog Sherlock. Which would've been cool, except he turned out to be a rather nasty, ugly, mean, not especially brilliant little thing that only really liked their (honestly, terrifying) mother, barked incessantly at the most inconvenient times, and was unpredictably nippy. So... hmm, not out of the question, but yeah. Tiro is also a good possibility. (Okay, yes, so maybe Neffie and I are just a teeny little bit obsessed with Roman history. *g*) I honestly thought, given some of the general breed characteristics, Neal would be an awesome possibility, but that one was firmly shot down by certain male members of our household. ;D

There've been other possibilities tossed around with varying degrees of seriousness, but really we don't even have any clear frontrunners at the moment. And yeah, you might say that maybe when we actually see the puppy inspiration will strike... but I kind of doubt that's gonna be a miraculous solution to our dilemma. I foresee much, much more discussion in the upcoming weeks. Um... outside opinions/suggestions are definitely welcome. XD

And speaking of dogs... We're in the midst of minor adventure with one at the moment.

A puppy (well... lab mix that looks to be about 5-6 months old, that is) showed up at our back door tonight. Naturally, being thoroughly dog-deprived and suddenly seeing an absolutely adorable and super, super friendly sweetie... we were stupid and had to pet him. After which he decided that he loved us dearly, and absolutely would not leave even if we ignored him - instead, he just sat outside the door and howled. Yes, he has a collar. Yes, someone apparently cared enough to get him vaccinated, because he's got a rabies tag. Unfortunately, that same owner did not care enough to actually put a tag with any other useful information on his collar. No name for the dog, no name for the owner, no address, no phone number. *sigh* Honestly? This makes me mad.

Fortunately, the vet who did the rabies shot happens to be the same one we bring our cats to. Unfortunately... well, of course no one's gonna be there on a Sunday night, and this is a small-town vet. They don't have anyone available after-hours. No help from that direction.

After some agonizing, we decided we couldn't just ignore him all night in hope he'd wander off home eventually. We're close to several very busy roads, it's dark out, it's slightly ditzy black dog who isn't very visible when running down unlit roads, there are dangerous wild animals in the area (including several rumored cougars), and cars drive very quickly down our very slippery, winding roads, regardless of conditions. I'd feel horrible if the sweet thing got run over just because his owners decided not to pay the few dollars to get a tag with their name and number so people could contact them.

After utilizing my Awesome Tracking Skillz to examine the snow and figure out which direction the dog had come from originally, Nef and I took Sweet Puppy down the road, presumably toward his home. Buuut... despite stopping at a couple neighbors' houses, one of whom offered to help contact the people nearby he knows, we weren't able to find anyone who recognized the dog or had any idea where he might belong. After we'd walked him nearly half a mile down the road, however, he suddenly took off with more of a purpose, so - we thought he must be close to home, and not being inclined to wander down unlit, not-very-familiar side roads at night we decided to just let him go and head home ourselves.

He caught up with us again halfway back.

So. In the end, we decided that the best option's to keep him here overnight (got a crate set up in the pole barn), and call the vet first thing in the morning to see if we can get any more information. I hate to do it, because I know the owner's likely to spend an anxious night, but given the alternatives, and considering what I'd want if it was my dog... :S

We shall see what the morning brings. In the meantime, I am in much need of sleep.

ETA: And success - we were finally able to track down the owner late this afternoon and get the puppy back to her. On the one hand, yay! On the other... now I am even more annoyed with her than I was over the failure to simply put an ID tag on him. *sighs* People.