BUBBA

5 August 2022

We all kind of decided that we weren't calling Bubbles "Bubbles," but something else.  I don't know why I didn't think "Bubbles" fit him, but maybe it sounded too feminine to me.  Anyway, he is now officially "Bubba."

I was surprised that the woman who gave him to us told us about how much he loved his toy and how he played with it all the time but that he never touched it and if you tried to give it to him, he ignored it.

I figured out that what he spent his first two days doing was just checking things out.  He would sit in my lap and just look around, partly waiting for Marta, but partly trying to figure out where he was and how he should feel about it.

Then, on Day 3, he started playing with his toy

He started carrying it around and jumped into my lap with it.

If this link works for you, you can see a brief video of him playing with it.

We have discovered that he is a couch potato.  Marta and Ned took him and Bouncer for a walk the first two days, which I thought was cool.  But on the third day, he didn't want to go and he hasn't wanted to go on a walk since, preferring to be in my lap, watching TV.  Obviously this is my dog!

I wasn't 100% sure that he knew how to find the dog door if he had to pee.  I knew he would go out the door if Marta called him from outside and I knew he would come in the door if we locked him outside, but I wasn't 100% sure he had figured out how to get to and go out the door on his own until a squirrel appeared at the back door.  He was out the family room, into my office and out the dog door in an instant, chasing the squirrel up a tree (his only negative so far). 

Ned was feeding a squirrel while Bubba was in my chair and Bouncer was on the floor behind Ned, in front of the chair.  Bubba was nervous jumping off the chair with Bouncer there and tried to find another way to get off the chair so he could chase the squirrel (unsuccessfully).

Now that we know he isn't going to pee anywhere and can be trusted, Marta has released the gate that blocks the stairs so he can go upstairs if he wants.  He slept in her lap while she worked the other day, and apparently last night climbed into bed with her.  Walt was surprised when he came in to his office to visit.  He has also become Walt's new lap dog.

But we have made the rule that at 9 p.m., the gate is closed again so he can't get upstairs, because we all want him to sleep downstairs with me.  And he does.

Though he is in and out of my lap all day long, when I'm in the recliner, it's always sitting up looking around.  But by about 9 p.m. he's ready to sleep and jumps into my lap and goes to sleep.  He will sleep on me all night long and if I get up to go to the bathroom, he gets up and then waits for me in the hall (like Polly used to) and then gets back in my lap and goes back to sleep again.  He originally got up as soon as Ned and Marta came downstairs for their walk in the morning but now that he knows what they are going to do, he wags his tail and then goes back to sleep.

All things considered, he's become a very good addition to the family and I already feel as warm about him as I did about Polly.