Dukus Updatus

I haven't written enough here about Duke. Seeing as the fairies are about to pull a baby out of the cabbage patch any day now, I probably won't want to write about much at all for a while. SO here is a Duke update while I still feel like it.

While Duke is still my special Fluff-Fluff Marshmallow Head, he is no longer the little puppy-wuppy-wumpkins who could walk under the coffee table after cats without ducking or pick up single moms at Dairy Queen just by wiggling his adorable wumpkins body at them. At seven or eight months, Fluff-Fluff is growing into quite a respectable sized Dog.

Despite his monstrosity and dinasaur feet, Duke is still a puppy who CANNOT BE TRUSTED. This means he spends a lot of time gated into the kitchen, where he listens to NPR coverage of world events and covets things on the counter. Oh, how he longs for those forbidden treasures from above...




Sometimes, he is so overwhelmed with covetous envy (and concern for the developing crisis in Darphur) that he takes out his angst on his own belongings. Like his bed: a comfy, simple, fabric-covered piece of foam which inexplicably cost $45. BAD FLUFF FLUFF!

When he is not busy coveting or mulling over politics, Duke's leisure time is filled with such activities as chewing kitty heads, thwarting the effects of evil-eye from Mrs. Prissy-Pants Kayla via a wet nose up her butt, and convincing others to play his favorite game, "Disgusting Rope."

Disgusting Rope is a complex battle of strategy, wherin a very smart dog somehow convinces very silly people to hold the slime-coated stringy end of a purple rope while he gets to hold the drier, knotted end, and then pulls those people out of their chairs with it. This game can go on for hours. People in this house play Disgusting Rope differently. When presented with Rope, Erin usually flees the room, and I tend to throw it far away from me. Carl, however, has embraced Disgusting Rope as fun Man/Dog bonding time. The prospect of fun bonding time causes Carl to do strange things. Like place Disgusting Rope in his mouth. Why, Carl? Why? It is saturated in dog spit! You go brush your teeth now!

I can forgive this gross disregard for my tender sensibilities, because bonding time often results in adorable puppy piles. No, not the sexy 19-year-old-girl-filled kind of puppy piles from Victoria's Secret catalogs and our college days; the other kind. The wholesome kind, with actual puppies. Well, one actual puppy, and one grown man who loves his puppy so much that he acts like a ten year old, uses the puppy as a Fluff-Fluff pillow, and forgets that only an hour ago he was standing over the shredded kitty litter box, in a pile of cardboard and litter, demanding, "Why did we want a dog, again?"