Giardia :-(

Well, after many truly unspeakable acts on the part of the vet, we have determined that I have giardia. What is giardia, you ask. It is some kind of nasty one-celled parasite that attaches itself to my intestines and basically steals my food while also making me feel yucky and have diarrhea. A nice beagle lady wrote a whole long explanation about it. Because of the giardia, all five of us pups are now taking Flagyl--but we know it as a peanut butter niblet.

Speaking of peanut butter, my person gave Rafe-oaf puppy a stuffed Busy Buddy to keep him busy. Of course, as soon as I could I took it away from him. Then, if you can imagine it, my person got up and took it away from ME and gave it back to HIM.

Here he is just chewing away on it. He is not nearly as skilled as I am at deconstructing the busy buddy. I used to get one every morning so that my people could eat their breakfast in peace, so I got very good at cleaning it out.

I'm pretty sure that he'll leave some of the choicest morsels--the kernals of dog kibble that have been thoroughly saturated with peanut butter--aided of course through targeted salivia delivery, which serves to bind the peanut butter more completely to the kibble.


When he gives up, I'll be waiting. In the meantime, my people lamely tried to appease me with a Kong--also stuffed, but not nearly as much challenge and really not more than a blatant bribe against my being mad at them for taking away my rightful acquistion.

Here I am in the last stages of cleaning out the Kong. I took it to the people's bed so that I could leave a nice peanut butter smear on their freshly laundered comforter. You can compare my skill to Rafe's--note in particular the differences in our grips--the wrist bend makes a lot of difference. Plus, you'll notice that my tongue is completely inside the Kong whereas Rafe is putting his in and out--a completely unnecessary use of energy that obviates the benefit of the additional calories gained from the peanut butter encrusted kibble in the first place.

Believe me, I have tried to explain this to Rafe, but he simply doesn't listen. Indeed, he listens to very little I have to say.

In this picture, I am doing my best to explain that there are serious consequences for staring at other dogs, in particular, for staring at me. You'll notice that he is averting his glance, finally--but this was after several tense moments of showing all of my teeth to him. I really am not sure he will ever be ready to enter the world of refined gentle pupdom, but I will perservere and accept that my lot in life is to try and teach this young rapscallion some respectable manners.
I may at some point need to enlist the services of the great Mugsy, who recently rid a Chihuahua of demons or perhaps William John Gavin can talk some sense into Rafe. I'm just glad that my goofy little brother Hamish is not quite such a project or I don't know when I'd ever get my grooming and napping done.

Today's picture from the puppy archive
Me at 10 weeks with my first ball (it even had a "tail")