amberica | Dog got a name, now needs a SHAVE

Well, I picked up the Dog Formerly Known as Paddington on Friday after work. He was wearing one of those terribly embarassing plastic cone collars and looked ridiculous. The ladies at the humane society helped me get it off of him, but then he started licking the stitches where he was neutered on Wednesday, which is a no-no, so the collar had to go back on! The poor little guy has such stubby short legs that the bottom of the cone kept hooking on the ground when he tried to look down, and it caused him no end of trouble when he tried to come up the stairs at our house! They told me that we can take the cone off by the end of the weekend, but we decided to take it off last night and see if we could just keep him distracted from the stitches, and he did OK.

He's still shaggy and messy as all get-out. I can't have him groomed for at least a week because of the stitches, and I need to get a rabies vaccination this week, too. I'm not even sure if the groomers would work with him before he has proof of that. We did brush him for a long time last night, but he has such huge puffs of thick hair in his armpits (and on his neck and belly and pretty much everywhere), that as soon as you start thinking you've got it under control, you realize you've basically just brushed all the hairy mess into another area on his body! God I can't wait to get him shaved clean.

I've taken a few pictures but still don't have a means to post them online yet. My regular laptop (the one with the software for uploading directly from my camera) is now fixed, but I don't know what Jon did with the power cord or the camera cable, so I'll have to remember to ask him about that.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot - I named the dog within minutes of getting him into the house. I was sitting on the floor brushing his belly, and he was laying flat on his back with his head on my leg. Jon came in and laughed at how goofy he looked, and I said, "I'm gonna name him *****," to which Jon was very agreeable, so the name stuck. This is actually one of the first names I suggested last week, but Jon didn't like it back then. I guess he came around! If you want to find out what the dog's name is, you'll have to do some research! The first person to find the name and post it as a comment here, WINS! Here's your clue: The dog is named after a Ronald Reagan movie co-starring a chimpanzee - the dog's name is the same as the chimp's name. Here's a picture in case you don't believe me: