little man's best friend

Honey has not been replaced, let me say that first and foremost. We did grant in-house status to Tabasco, our black lab, today just to see how he'd do. He's been inside during the extreme cold weather anyway, and usually he just stays in his crate. He's always just stayed in his crate, even with the crate door open--he loves it in there! Even when other people have cared for him, he was mostly a stay-in-my-cave kind of dog. He takes after David that way, I guess. Today he thought he'd be social and actually came out of his crate, and this reminded me of the other reasons why he hasn't been a house dog all along. Honey was a big dog, easily 80 pounds or more--golden retrievers are not small. In my mind, Tabasco didn't seem that much bigger--after all, he's a very similar breed. Looking at him in the house is a different matter. Yes, just like I always remember after spending much time with him, he is a BIG OX of a dog, well over 100 pounds. His head comes up over the kitchen counters. Nothing is safe. He is well behaved, though, and is house trained still, and he put up with Dennis' loving today with the same amount of patience as Honey always did. He was hugged and patted (kind of hard) and his tail was pulled, he was briefly ridden, he was yelled at and told he was bad along with a strongly extended toddler index finger pointing him to his crate (and then reassured by us that he was not, in fact, a bad dog). He wags his tail so hard that it hurts all of us when we inadvertently get in its path. And he laid at our feet while we sat on the couch and read books. There is an added bonus: Tabasco plays fetch. Honey was too smart to fetch after she turned 3--she would watch the ball sail by and give you a look that said 'what is the point? you'll only throw it away again...'. Dennis LOVES playing fetch with a dog and Tabasco happily trotted off after his toy time and again and brought it soggily back to Dennis who squealed in glee. So though I had visions of a temporarily dog-hair-free home, it is not to be. I'll now be vacuuming up black barbs of hair instead of golden tumbleweeds. And it's totally worth it.