6.04.2006

pugs, not drugs

You know those parents who for some reason think that everyone is deeply interested in every little thing their spoiled monster-children do? Humor me for a moment as I morph into one of those people.

As mentioned before, the spousal unit and I have a pug, who is just over five months old now. As I also mentioned before, he has a lively appetite. In fact, I once dropped a screw on the ground and he lunged for it, enveloping it in his mouth before I was even able to bend over. Thankfully, I was able to pry it out of his mouth before he actually swallowed the thing.

Because of this appetite, he has a few quirks. The wife usually wakes up before I do (no big surprise to those who know me) and has a bowl of cereal, with Mr. Pug waiting patiently at her feet. He has learned that he always gets his meal after she finishes hers, and now he has learned how to tell when it's almost meal time for himself. When my wife gets down to the last few bites of cereal, her spoon clangs lightly against the near-empty bowl. Our dog has somehow figured this out, and now he starts to get fidgety and makes low growling/whining sounds whenever he hears the spoon clang against the bowl. Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

One other oddity reminds me of a monkey temple that we went to while visiting India. There's this temple near the city of Jaipur (which happens to be where they filmed one of the Roger Moore James Bond flicks), and every evening the temple is overrun by literally thousands of monkeys. They're generally friendly, and you can feed them out of your hand, if you want. Funny thing is, if you hold something for them in between two fingers while still holding other food clenched in the palm of the same hand, they'll completely ignore the food you're offering and try to pry your fingers back to get to the food that you have clenched in your palm. Our dog does the same thing. We make him sit before we put the food in his bowl, and if we drop just one piece of food in the bowl at a time, he'll completely ignore them until we drop in the rest all at once. This is quite a show of resolve for an animal that lunges after stray screws.

Oh, and one other thing. You may remember that this blog was commenced(almost used the word "consummated", but decided against it) under the shadow of a second failed summmer job prospect. Well, I have now redeemed myself with not one, but two summer jobs. And one of them gives me a 401(k). What kind of summer jobs do that? It's unfortunate I'll only be able to contribute to it for a whopping two months...

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