Is Myrtle Sane...

Meet Froggy and Duckie.  They are my new babies!  New babies with proper squeakers that squeak each and every time I squish them in my mouth.

Myrtle says they are my reward for going longer and longer before having an improper disposition of major deposits not out of doors.

Only, she does not call them Froggy and Duckie.  She calls them Froggy-Goes-Poo Poo-Outside and Duckie-Goes-Poo Poo-Outside.  Has Myrtle lost her marbles?  Who, pray tell me, in their right mind would ever name babies like that?  Who?  I fear for my puppy momma's sanity.  I truly do.

However, I am the happy adopter of new babies.  Remember?  A fellow can never have enough babies.  Never!

These are most wonderful, too, since they are so tiny.  They fit in my mouth just perfectly.  And, oh, those wonderful, fantastic, stupendous, most awesome squeakers!  Sometimes, I fall asleep with a baby in my mouth squeaking away until my dreams begin.

So, I am a very happy puppy.  I am also a very worried one....


This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off!

Does Myrtle love me...

Sometimes, I wonder if Myrtle loves me anymore.  Sometimes, I wonder if she ever loved me.  Mostly,  I wonder what love is.

I asked Myrtle about this once.  She got really, really quiet.  After a long while, she said she didn't really know what love is.  Then, she started weeping.  I never brought up the subject again.

I asked her about families.  This question was also greeted with tears.  But at least I can understand that.  I mean, what family ever stays together anymore?  My mom and my dad didn't even live in the same house.  For a while, I lived in a pile of puppies, my brothers and sister, and with my birth mom nearby, watching over me and giving me tasty stuff to drink from her body.  For the briefest of times.  Then, suddenly, without so much as a single goodbye, I lost the only home I had ever known to come live at this one.  Sometimes I wonder if...someday...I might find myself being forced to leave this one just as suddenly.

Do I love Myrtle?  Well, I want to be with her every moment of every day.  Okay, every moment that I am not playing with Neighbor Dog through the fence.  I leap up into her arms each time she returns from when she leaves.  I snuggle with her at night.  I shower her with kisses.  I forgive her for not sharing the bacon.  Do I love Myrtle?  I guess I do not really know.

Does she love me?  What is love?

She has become increasingly perturbed with me over my inappropriate deposits.  So much so, that I am scared of her response when she notices what I have done.  I try to hide behind the green chair, but she spots me anyway.  I hate it when she yells at me and then sticks me in what she calls puppy time out.  I hate it so much so that I have been trying very, very, very hard to do as she would like.  But, sometimes, wanting a thing is not enough...no matter how much you want it to be.

Myrtle cut my hair this afternoon.  She also pulled and cut hair from my ears.  Boy, does that ever make me feel as if she no longer loves me.  But then, tonight, she gave me a bath.  My favorite thing in the entire world!  [Remember, I have never tasted bacon.]  Twice now, she has done so in the basement sink.  Since I outgrew the kitchen sink and had to stand in both halves, I supposed I do not mind the gargantuan tub that is the basement sink.  Myrtle tried keeping the plug in, but as the water filled up around me, I started to panic.  She did not blame me one bit for my fear.  Myrtle simply pulled the plug and continued her scrubbing.

I guess you could say that what is my favorite thing in the entire world is what comes after the bath.  First, Myrtle dries my hair with two towels.  Then, she wraps me up as tight as a puppy can be in the third towel, wraps me up until I cannot move an inch and only my nose is sticking out.  Finally, she lies down on the couch with me.  Well, by the times she takes but a few steps from the sink, I am already asleep.  But since I wake up on the couch, I am fairly certain that is where Myrtle takes me.  She takes me there and holds me in her arms for as many hours as I wish to sleep.

Tonight, Myrtle muttered something about nothing but the best for her puppy and then carried me upstairs, still dripping a bit, to fetch a new towel.  A towel new to me.  It is this gloriously soft, thick, pink and purple and blue towel that Myrtle called a "beach towel," a towel that is at least a gazillion times larger than me.  By far, this is the BEST post-bath towel on the planet.

Above, you can see that Myrtle pulled the top of the towel back to get a good photo of me.  That's okay.  I was asleep anyway.  Actually, she said she took eight of them, four with the flash and four without.  None of the flashes woke me. I  was too busy sleeping.  And dreaming.

Does this most wonderful of towels mean that Myrtle still loves me even though her ire is increasingly raised against me and she will leave me in the kitchen all by myself when I have an accident no matter how much I beg and plead to be with her again?  How many times will she continue to forgive me for messing up?  Did Myrtle ever love me?  Do I love her?  Is she my family now?  What about my first family?  Did my mother and father love me?  Do my brothers and sister miss me?  Do either my parents or my siblings ever think about me?  With this new family last? What is family?  What is love?

As you can see, I am a fellow full of questions with no answers.  But at least I am soft and fluffy and smell like lavender now.  Myrtle cannot resist a soft and fluffy and lavender-smelling Amos.  No matter how many mistakes I make tomorrow, I will be forgiven.

This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off!

I'm not the only one...

I'm not the only one.  Myrtle...she can be down right sneaky!  I think, perhaps, my view of her has changed.

You see, for the longest time, I was getting her up at a reasonable hour:  9:00, 9:30, 10:00.  Don't those sound reasonable to you?  But then...Myrtle struck with a sneaky, crafty, underhanded move!

Myrtle hung two cotton blankets in our bedroom windows.  No longer does the glorious sun come pouring through the windows in the early morn, letting me know when we should awake.  No, that sneaky momma of mine has made it so that I am really not sure if it is morning or afternoon or early evening.

And so we sleep.  We sleep late.  Really late.

But that's not even the half of it.  Myrtle basically is a cheater.  Seriously, she is a cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater!

How so? you ask.  Myrtle has taken to leaving the windows opened all day and all night.  So, for example, last night it was 52 degrees in our bedroom.  FIFTY-TWO DEGREES!  So, a fellow is forced to snuggle up with his momma just to keep hypothermia from setting in.

And it doesn't even end there.  Seriously!  Well, whenever I stir, trying to do my duty for getting us both out of bed, Myrtle will pick me up, tuck my head beneath her chin, curl her body around mine, and stick out her hand for me to chew upon for a while.  The low-down dirty rat!
 
Early-morning, Myrtle will get up, tend her business, crawl back in bed, tuck me back in close, whisper sweet nothings, and I totally forget that we are supposed to be getting up for the day because it is dark and dreary in the room.  Dark and dreary and freezing cold.  But snuggling next to Myrtle, beneath the covers, I am warm.

Myrtle does the same a few hours later to take her morning medication.  Don't you think that if she is taking her medication for the day that Myrtle should get out of bed for the day?

Here she is, sticking out her arm to take a photo of me sleeping on her shoulder.  Yes, she's that bad.  She basically mocks me with her sneakiness by documenting it for all time.

I know...I know...I am an adorable fellow. You don't have to tell me.  And I am quite confident in my manhood, as you can see, to be sleeping so peacefully on floral sheets.  I suppose I do not really mind sleeping with Myrtle.  I just think she's setting a terrible example by being so sneaky and underhanded about getting us to sleep in later in the mornings.

And, well, I guess I should note just one small point.  Myrtle's been doing a lot of volunteering for a mission in Africa.  In going back and forth with the director, she's often up in the early hours of the morning.  If not with him, then with her writing project.  And if not her writing project is it either pain or nausea or both keeping her awake until exhaustion finally allows her to sleep.

Still.  Sneaky.  Is that really right?


This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off!

Love hurts...

Myrtle and I have been working on a proper understanding of where to do my business.  I would proffer that I am doing MUCH better at heeding her wishes.  I would also say--to be honest--because Myrtle has gotten downright ugly about even the smallest little mistake on my part when it comes to this matter.

An ugly Myrtle frightens me, is something that I definitely wish to avoid, and has been a great motivator to me to redouble my efforts to grasp the proper disposition of my business.  But, do not get me wrong, Myrtle is still a great puppy mom.  Whenever she loses her temper, she ALWAYS apologizes and asks for my forgiveness.  She really does try to be patient with me. I only wish I could be a better student in where it is she finds acceptable to relieve myself.

If you take a look see at my rather handsome photo, you will see my beloved Hippo.  You know I have said that a fellow cannot have enough babies.  A fellow also benefits from always having a baby or two with him.  Hippo is a GREAT friend. His squeaker is still intact, which is all kinds of awesome to me, but he fits best in my mouth, so is quite easy to carry around with me.  So loved is he, I rarely forget to carry him upstairs with me when it is time for bed.  Myrtle snuggles with me and I snuggle with Hippo.

Here you can see me with Neighbor Dog.  She is my current girl friend.

Now, our relationship got off to a rocky start.  In the first few days of living here, Myrtle and I were out in the backyard, as she tried to introduce me to the great OUTSIDE and grass. She had put a kettle on to boil and it started making a most wretched noise.  So, Myrtle darted inside to take it off the stove.  Before either of us could think, Neighbor Dog had appeared in the back yard and was dangling me from her teeth.

I squealed like stuck pig. [It was not my proudest moment.] Myrtle came running outside and charged Neighbor Dog.  She dropped me, Myrtle scooped me up, and then my momma tossed me in the back porch and closed the door.  She then ran next door, sobbing, and demanded that someone come fetch Neighbor Dog from our yard.

I admit that I was terrified and need hours of snuggling to calm down.  I also avoided the back yard as much as possible.  Myrtle was completely supportive of the former, but she was heartlessly against the latter and forced me to go OUTSIDE.  I was left to tremble on the other side of the yard as I searched for prospective spots to do my business.

Neighbor Dog is NOT like the Fearsome Beast.  Myrtle finally explained to me that she discovered Neighbor Dog is a female dog and was most likely trying to take care of me like my momma did.  She said that mommas will pick up their puppies in their mouths to carry them to safety.  Since I carry my babies around with my mouth to keep them safely nearby or to tuck them safely into bed, that made sense to me.  I decided to give Neighbor Dog a second chance.

She was VERY patient with me, spending days on end lying low to the ground and wagging her tail until I was brave enough to approach.  Once I was close, she stuck her nose between the links on the fence, gave me a kiss, and then popped back to her side and wagged her tail some more.  Her kiss was kind of nice.

Now, months later, we kiss all the time.  We wag our tails together and run up and down in front of the fence together.  Sometimes we talk and sing together.  Mostly, our relationship has been just great.  But then, just as with Myrtle, I was rather cruelly reminded that love hurts.

You can see in the photo above that Myrtle snapped of our kissing and tail wagging, Hippo is lying on the ground beneath my face.  My beloved Hippo.  My baby.  My staunch companion.

Nature called and I stepped away from Neighbor Dog to tend to my business.  When I turned back around, I was rather horrified to see that Hippo was gone!  My beloved Hippo was lost to me!

Myrtle, my wonderful Myrtle came running (okay...hobbling) at my first cry and quickly spotted the problem.  My beloved Hippo was hanging from Neighbor Dog's mouth on the OTHER side of the fence.  Oh, did my heart hurt.  The betrayal.  The fear.  The agony of separation.

Myrtle called out to Neighbor Dog, but instead of realizing her error, instead of understanding how much she was hurting me and giving me back my beloved Hippo, Neighbor Dog backed away from the fence and then turned and ran over to her deck.  Before I could really grasp what was happening, she had buried Hippo in a planter.  NEIGHBOR DOG BURIED HIPPO ALIVE!

Oh, my Hippo.  Oh, my beloved Hippo.

Myrtle, my beloved Myrtle, went running (okay...hobbling) over to the house next door and patiently waited on the porch for several long minutes until someone finally answered the door.  She explained the problem and asked that Neighbor Dog's momma rescue Hippo.  She did.  Myrtle brought him to me.  And, finally, my heart stopped hammering in my chest...finally, I could catch my breath...finally I could try my tears.  Hippo came back to me!

As you can see, Hippo is somewhat worse for the wear, having been so cruelly buried.  Myrtle promised me that he would soon be better.  Of course, that meant that she had to take him from my mouth and carry him down the steps to the basement.  Ever the faithful poppa to my Hippo, I lay down on the top step and waited for him to be returned to me for good.

Love hurts.  Really, it does.  It hurts to love another dog, because she will inevitably betray you.  It hurts to love a baby, because this world is wicked and evil and it is simply impossible to keep your babies safe. It hurts to love a momma because she will make you do things that you do not want to do.  Seriously, love hurts!


This is my life with Myrtle. Amos Adams signing off!

Myrtle Scissorhands...

Those are my ears.

Seriously, all that fluffy stuff and the bits not even in the picture and the chucks cut last night are my ears.

Myrtle likes to keep me cut short, even though she revels in my curls.  It is easier for her to care for me that way because as great as my curls are, when they get the slightest bit long, they mat.

Only, she's been keeping my neck hair longer because she says that my neck is too small for my body.  Myrtle has NOTHING to speak when it comes to things being too small.  Her head is WAY too small for her body.  I never mention this to her.  And yet she not only tells me about my neck, but she mentions her errant opinion to others.  SIGH.  [Good thing that I know what a handsome fellow I really am.]

Well, her unkind words have come home to roost.

There we were, last night, snuggling and all of a sudden, Myrtle starts feeling all over the back of my neck.  She sits up, starts muttering colorful metaphors.  Before I realized what was happening, my gentle puppy mom morphed into Myrtle Scissorhands.

She snipped and snipped and snipped until my neck hair was barely a quarter of an inch.  She then snipped off the back of both of my ears.  They are naked!

I thought my ordeal was over.  Oh, was I ever wrong.

Myrtle asked me if I wanted to go outside.  Because a fellow can always do a little business, I trotted out to my doom, completely unsuspecting of the torture awaiting me once I finished watering one of the bushes.  Myrtle pulled me up in her lap, showered me with kisses, murmured several apologies, and then picked up this metal instrument of pain and started dragging it through my ears.  My ears!

TWO HOURS LATER, Myrtle finally released me.  My ears were sopping wet from all the detangler stuff she constantly sprayed as she raked that thing through the hair on my ears over and over and over again.  All that fluffy stuff you see was my ears. My ears are lying on the ground...no longer attached to my body where they belong!  SOMEBODY HELP ME!

Okay...I still have some of my ears left.  Less than half what they were before Myrtle started in on them.  And, well, they are no longer two matted lumps aside my head covered by a layer of curls. They are now back to their silky soft fluffy wonderfulness.  Still...would you do that to someone you purportedly loved? Would you torture him remorselessly for hours on end?

SIGH.


This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off!