Gojira is now a happy, bouncing, 85 pound puppy. He just hit seven months, and due to scheduling issues with the veterinary clinic, he's off to get himself surgically Stepfordized tomorrow. I'll be chauffeuring him on the long ride into biological oblivion.
I'm so very pleased to be doing my part.
I know I'm turning him into a person, or at least putting my own feelings into his fuzzy little (huge) head, which thinks and processes in ways that I can't begin to really see clearly. I doubt he'll have any idea that anything has happened, other than his Pop having taken him somewhere remote, that smelled weird, where he got really really high on something and then got carried back to the car. That said, I hope he doesn't hold this against me.
In reading a discussion on crate training of dogs (they were all anti-), the refrain was "...I wouldn't want to be locked up all the time..." &c &c, to which one commenter (bless their hearts) added "Well, no one asked him how he felt about being forcibly sterilized, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be crazy about that, personally."
Yeah, that does pretty much sum it up.
No matter how much we all know it's the right thing, and the healthy thing etc., no guy wants to talk about this, and I wager that none of us feel all that awesome about being a part to it. We as a society talk about our neutered and spayed animals having "girlfriends" and "boyfriends" (I'm not the only one who has heard these tossed around) when in fact it's about as sexual as a Manchu dynasty slapfight between eunuchs. They may like each other, but that stuff is pretty far from their minds, folks. Don't try and make yourselves feel that your dog still has the capacity for romantic love in them, because they didn't even if you had let them keep their full complement of original equipment.
So, to assuage my misplaced and absurd guilt, I'm just hanging out with my enormous puppy, who's been resting his head on my lap and leaning on me for the past twenty minutes and has now passed out splayed across the floor.
With his height at around 26" at the shoulder, and a length from the base of his neck to the base his tail of about the same number, splayed out makes for substantial real estate.
He is now, at seven months, the biggest dog I or any friend of mine owns. It's a slightly more substantial roommate than I thought I was signing on for, and the vet seemed to think 175 pounds was in the realm of the reasonable.
Luckily, Bernese Mountain Dog owners we've spoken to have indicated that 150 is certainly the high end of what we might expect. At least I'll still be able to pick him up in that case, which would be more of a stretch for a 175 pound dead lift and carry to the car in the event of something awful happening...
Something about a dog completely erases cynicism, and it's a part of myself I've always been very attached to. He's a tremendous little/big guy, and we're lucky for him.
Other than that, and spending a good chunk of the weekend at work (with faltering, and eventually doomed air conditioning), and sweltering through this lovely heat wave that has finally come to a merciful close, I'm fully in the midst of getting ready for a wedding.
I never knew all the things that would have to come to pass to make this happen, and I'm just hoping everything comes together.
Ladies, if you are trying to shepherd a prospective groom through this process, be aware that they may very well not have a strong opinion about something which is vital to everyone else. It's not that they don't care, it's that it never even occurred to them to consider the question. We care, but sometimes find out that there's a new surprise to care about that we didn't even have on our radar.
We love you, and that's the important thing to remember.
Go and wander over and take a look at Tigger's blog (staceirene.blogspot.com) and get a sense of her wedding dress experience. It is roaringly funny...
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