Back by popular demand!

Why yes, I do enjoy a nice cigar every now and then…

Gitchee gitchee goo!

His “I’m happy to be outside” face.

I can’t fit on my baby bed anymore!

No leash can hold me!

Pick it up, Daddy!

Kelly and I have decided that we’re not putting up any more pictures of London on this site. We talked about it, and decided that there were too many reasons to stop.

First, it was just too time-consuming. We have a hard enough time keeping up with him, much less taking pictures of him. Think about how frustrating it is to think you’ve got a great shot of him chasing a stick, only to see you got a tip of a brown tail and a whole bunch of nothing else. When he finally does settle down, we’re scared to take a picture for fear he’ll wake back up and start racing around again.

We also had to take into consideration his feelings. The poor thing’s less than 4 months old! How would you like getting a camera shoved into your face at any moment’s notice when you’re that young? It’d be traumatic! Did you see his face in my “under the table” shot? That wasn’t cuteness, my friends…that was fear. When we thought about it, we decided that we couldn’t put him through that kind of pain any more.

So, I’m sorry, but I’ll just have to tell you about how big London’s grown, or the cute pose he made the other day, without any visual reference on this site. It’s for the best, really. I think that he’ll be a better dog for it.

Ball? Stick? Why should I have to choose?

We haven’t gotten many pictures of him panting. This is the first one.

Looking out the window on one of his first trips. I think that we were heading to the park for the first time with him.

This one’s just too cute, isn’t it?

For perspective, I’m the one taking this picture, stretching my arm out as far as I can. He already can spread out from my feet to the middle of my chest! He’s going to be a big ‘un…

Brianna…this is what eventually became of Squid. He was retired immediately after the picture was taken. A new Squid has taken his place.

Tonight, we registered our little boy with the AKC. Incidentally, we actually have full registration, but I don’t think that we’ll be taking advantage of all of that.

As part of this, we get the option to name the dog. Obviously, you know the name that we’re calling him, but we wanted to give him a full name. We didn’t have the right to use the breeder’s kennel name in his name, but that’s OK because we really weren’t planning on giving him a “kennel name” anyway.

All right, so what’s his name, you ask?

London Cartwright German.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous entry, London is named after Jack London, one of my favorite authors. Initially, I wanted to have his second name be one of London’s dog names. But after looking around, all we could find were Buck (from Call of the Wild), White Fang, and several Inuit and other native names that I didn’t really like well with London. So I finally decided to look up Labrador itself, and found the town of Cartwright. It’s the sixth-largest town in the province of Labrador, and I liked the way it sounded against London. So Cartwright it was!

Our dog is a music lover, apparently. We have bought a little radio for him to listen to during the day when we’re gone, and it seemed to have worked, because Kelly told me one day that he behaves better in the mornings if she puts the television on a music video channel. So that’s what we do now…CMT in the morning.

Well, I guess that he’s decided that he wants to be a more active consumer of music. Today, as I was eating my lunch, I noticed him getting onto my computer, which had a web browser open with Google as the active page. I got him off of the computer, then looked at the screen to see “cd” entered into the search box.

I think I need to tell him about iPods and such. There are much better ways to have music now.

Anyway, on to the pictures. These are real pictures, with sometimes-witty commentary for your reading and viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

A couple of weekends ago, London took his first road trip to see his paternal grandparents for the first time. As part of the trip, he got to meet the other dogs in the family. Particularly of interest to him was Barney, one of their two Labs. This picture fairly well sums up the activities of the weekend for the two of them. Incidentally, Barney has the patience of a saint.

It’s not a big surprise that he absolutely loves Kongs. Especially when they’ve got peanut butter and kibble inside. What dog doesn’t?

Yes, that’s him actually lying on the top of the couch cushion behind me. I guess the sly grin on his face is due to the fact that he’s getting away with being behind one of us on the couch, something that we swore we wouldn’t let him get away with.

This was a one-in-a-million shot. He’s actually underneath our living room coffee table in this picture. I didn’t want to flush him out of there by making a big noise, so I just reached down with my arm and blindly took a shot, hoping for the best. The result owns me so much, the large version of this picture is now my desktop image.

Yes, he actually is holding that huge thing in his mouth.

Awww…

What you didn’t see was the part where he picked up a cup in his teeth and raked it back and forth across the bars.

He really enjoys laying on the vents when they’re blowing hot air.

I’m helping daddy blog!

In descending order, by name:

5. “Squid”: One of the Kong Wubba things that’s kinda fleecy. It looked like a four-tentacled squid to me, so that’s what it became. He likes chewing on it when he’s a little more wound down.

4. “Candy Rope”: A multi-faceted toy combining a rope loop, a hard plastic connector, a tennis ball, and a frayed section of rope. You’ve seen it in some of the pictures I’ve posted. I named it candy rope because it’s a Christmas toy, and it’s got the color scheme of a red, green, and white candy cane. He likes chewing the frayed part between his side teeth.

3. “Frog”: A squeaky frog. So named because he has another frog named Kermit already (it’s his crate sleeping toy). Used to have a rubber tongue, but it doesn’t now!

2. The purple food holder: I don’t really have a name for this one yet. It’s this high on the list because he’s figured out that we often put food in it. It’s one of those that’s supposed to release food intermittently as the dog plays with it, but it seems to drop most everything at one time. Of course, London doesn’t mind this “feature” at all.

And number 1:

1. Sticks: Oh, my gosh, he loves sticks. It almost makes me wonder why we bought any toys for him in the first place. Just bring a wide variety of woods (pine for that satisfying crunch between your jaws; hickory for durability and hardness, etc.), and he’d be good to go.

This list, of course, does not count items that we do not consider toys, such as our shoes, jackets, couch cushions, blankets, recliner levers, leashes, plants, table legs…

We decided that we’d take London to see a vet for a kind of “get-to-know-you” session. This way, we figured, he wouldn’t just equate the vet with shots and other bad things.

Kelly took him in today. As part of the process, he was weighed. You know how much the little porker weighs? 14.3 pounds! I think that those early accidental overfeedings did their job. This isn’t to say that he’s fat. I still see his ribs, and I can see his waist from above, so I know that we’re not overfeeding him. Plus, he wolfs down the food in approximately 24.8 seconds when we do feed him, so it’s not as if he’s decided he’s had enough.

One thing that I do wish is that we could play outside with him more. Having the rug helps, but not being able to just run outside with him without worrying about him getting into danger makes it tough to give him the good playtime he probably needs. But we’ll be getting a fence soon enough, I guess…

Here’s some more pics, with commentary from London himself.

I like sleeping on daddy…

Then again, two laps are better than one…

EXTREME CLOSEUP!

I pity the fool who tries to take this away from me. That’s right, person to my left. I see you.

His real name is third on the list of things we call him; “Buddy” is second: First? “Leave it.”

Oh, I thought it said “hog food”, not “dog food”: I had been feeding London a cup of food per feeding time, and worrying that he wasn’t eating it all. Thankfully, my wife, who can read better than I, noticed that the cup of food was per day, not per feeding time.

In other news, the sun is hot and water is wet: puppies and wood floors get along like water and oil.

Cheap labor is nice: he’s developed a habit of taking sticks, leaves, you name it to the base of the deck stairs.

We’re hoping for six hours sleep between the two of us tonight: he doesn’t like his crate, which will be referred to the rest of this post as That Which Must Not Be Named. Whimpering and crying goes on for at least 20 minutes after insertion into TWMNBN, with the record so far being over an hour. That being said, he has been getting better already.

All right, enough of that. On to the pictures!

No, he didn’t fall right after this picture was taken.

“Like Mike…if I could be like Mike…”

He likes to wedge himself into places.

“Mine…all mine!”