The universe is out of whack. It has been completely unbalanced for a week now. Last Thursday, Kate Paulk, leader of the Sad Puppies IV movement, wrote a blog post about… kittens. Miniature gattos. Floppy, fluffy, felines. The new addition to her family, Princess Buttercup, is adjusting to her new home and has just about finished taking her place as head-of-household. For tax purposes only, probably.

Of course, her post rendered the cat/dog universe completely unbalanced. So congratulations on your new therapy aid, Ms. Paulk, but I think I should help out by balancing accounts with this post.

A family friend has a dog who had puppies. It was a planned pregnancy; I’m pretty sure the dogs were properly married and all that. By all accounts, the baby-making process was mutually agreeable.  And we’ve decided to adopt one of them. We don’t know which one yet.

Here they are at 11 days old. Their eyes have just opened and they are beginning to realize the world is larger than mom’s tit. Mom has eight or so biological feeding stations, but one must taste like root beer because all three seem to fight over it.

The little tri-color dude is the one I’m leaning toward:

Mom is a Collie, dad is a German Shepard, so it is unlikely we’ll get a Border Collie out of the deal. Which is probably for the best since we only have a virtual herd of vegetables and critters to wrangle.

The little guy currently has the moniker “Batman”. I don’t know why, he does not appear to be a vigilante or wear tights, but perhaps Glyph’s friend has psychic powers. Stranger things have happened. We’ll probably change the name if we adopt him: I’m considering “Whiskey.”

Feel free to leave other suggestions in the comments. Princess Buttercup is already taken, so don’t suggest that one.

The other choice is Tubbs. He was apparently the fat, healthy one at birth but all three have filled out nicely. His personality is a little better right now, but they develop so fast we’ll make a final decision again in a couple of weeks. Whichever one we choose, he’ll have to fit into a pack that includes an aging three-legged metrosexual greyhound and a super-happy black lab bitch. What? I can use that word: it means a girl dog.

The whole family is looking forward to the “puppy stage” again. It seems like a whole year ago when we got our lab,  probably because she’s about 18 months old . We brought her with us every time we left the house so she would socialize properly both with people and other dogs. It probably prevented a lot of damage to our house, too. Puppies are very destructive.

We hope the cat/dog universe is once again in balance. We’ll be visiting again in a couple of weeks and will get more pictures, so if further puppy cuteness is needed, for Sad Puppies IV morale purposes, say, we’ll be happy to step up.