He DOES Have a Pulse.....

When my baby brother first met Larry, he asked, "Does that dog even HAVE a pulse??"

Yeah, he's pretty laid back.  And the first couple of weeks, he moved like an old man, stiff of hip and slow of step.  He just generally didn't have a f..., well, any energy, to give.

He was stressed.  He was mourning.  He'd lost everything, twice over:  His name, his surroundings, and most of all, his person.

I'm pretty sure it was just one person, and I think it was probably an old guy.  Larry perks up every time a slow-moving old guy with a cane and a baseball cap comes by, and moves a bit faster to check him out if possible.  With Maybelle we were able to keep her name.  With Larry, we only knew that the rescue had been calling him HotDog for a couple of weeks, and they didn't know his original name.

Camping this weekend loosened him up.  He knows how to work a zipper (but you have to watch - he likes to take the slider off - we have a couple of sweatshirts that don't zip anymore) so he could get into the tent anytime.  And even though he could have left the tent without assistance, he woke me up for permission when he needed to go out in the night.

The fenced dog park let him do what he likes:  Monitor the perimeter.  And once that was done, he RAN.  It was amazing to see a dog that only a few days earlier required dragging to move, run.

This mornings' walk got even more interesting.  Larry got a squirrel by the tail.  Yes, Dave, yes, he did. There were a few factors in this.

1) City squirrels are oblivious little gits.  They apparently assume they are pretty safe.
2) Larry has some pretty impressive sneak skills for a big dog.  He drops low, the tags stop jingling, and he moves in careful.
3) When he shifts from stalk to strike he SHIFTS FAST.
4) Squirrels, when in a panic, underestimate the size of their squirrely butts in relation to the openings of chain link fences.  It was a nearly fatal slowdown.

In the end, the squirrel's tail was missing a good bit of fur, and Larry was wearing his finest Stoner Smirk.

He's becoming quite the family man. If you don't go to him, he'll come to you.  Yes, the boy has a pulse.

DeeDee