Bullie bullie bullie continued continued continued

 

Stardancer

I KNEW IT I KNEW IT I KNEW IT! You loved those puppies far too much to wait all the way until next year. It’s Destiny, or Fate, or just The Way It Had To Be. 

glinda

Is there anyone reading the blog who didn’t see this coming? ::grin:: 

Well, hindsight is a wonderful thing.   You do need to remember however that this isn’t a box of kittens/puppies with a FREE TO GOOD HOME label.  There did have to be a puppy available. 

            And then I could be a totally powerless and besotted wuss. 

EMoon

I KNEW IT! I KNEW that would happen!! (Puts big mark on scoreboard of “Guessing Right” We will ignore all the blank squares.) 

Snork.  Oh, how I know this feeling.  Conversation over the supper table at the old house about fifteen years ago:  Hey, I’ve had a great idea for a short story about a pegasus.  I know it’s going to go, because I know the first line:  Because she was a princess she had a pegasus.  —Well, I did have a good idea for a story about a pegasus.  So I was a little wrong about the ‘short’. 

I knew it because people who complicate their lives continue to complicate their lives (you don’t have to ask me how I know: I’ll tell you. It’s how come I have two unrideable horses and one nearly unrideable mountain bike and managed to fall off a non-moving non-mountain bike in a shop yesterday, almost-nearly taking down a standing display with four bikes hanging off it.) 

And you KNIT.  Don’t forget the KNITTING.  (Knitting is good.  You can knit while resting your bruises on the sofa.)

You were doomed when you first posted about those pups–probably the moment when you first agreed to go see those pups. Ditto knitting, writing, gardening… 

And singing.  Which is your fault.*  And I probably was doomed from meeting Hazel, whom Southdowner brought to that first London signing, um, four years ago?  I think.  I think it was about a year after this blog first rumbled underway.  I’ve spent the last four years hoping that Southdowner would breed Hazel.  Hey, maybe Olivia and Lavvy will inspire her and next year . . . wait a minute.  A litter from Hazel?  My original crush?  NOOOOOOOOO.  I don’t need two bull terriers.  The hellhounds and I, trampled and broken, would have to leave the country.

             But there’s something very attractive about having a complicated life.  Attractive:  you know, like black and fawn dog hair and your pale grey skirt.  Like beet juice and your white t shirt.

Lucky puppy. Lucky hellhounds (though they won’t realize it yet.) 

I have a vision of hellhounds wedged into the gap between the kitchen cupboards and the ceiling, doing the canine equivalent of the bottlebrush tail and the hissing. 

shalea

Yaay, vicarious puppy adventures! 

::trembles::  Um.  Yes.  ::trembles more::  This may be the moment when I really do cut back on blog time.  I may declare a Weekly Puppy Photo Post Day. 

jmeadows

They’re ALL so cute! I can’t wait to see which one you get!  

Me too.  The suspense is killing me.  Not to mention making the compilation of long lists of potential names more arduous (and sillier). 

Diane in MN

Sympathetic congratulations.   

Snork.  Yes, how old is Teddy?  Younger than the hellhounds.  You are remembering puppyhood even more acutely than I am.  BUT BULL TERRIERS EAT.  UNLIKE HELLHOUNDS AND (SOME) GREAT DANES.  THIS WILL BE WORTH QUITE A LOT OF MANIA AND MAYHEM.  Unless of course my bullie turns out to be the only bullie who was ever born who doesn’t adore food with a single minded and passionate infatuation.  In which case I will leave the country.  And take up raising snow leopards in the Hindu Kush. 

Hopefully the hellhounds will be used to you coming home smelling like bullie puppies by the time you bring one home, and won’t think their new little sister is a stranger. 

I should stop washing my post-puppy jeans the moment I come through the door and let the hellhounds sleep on them.

I quite like the look in Pavlova’s eye. 

Yes, so do I!  I think Pavlova was the original Big Girl in which case I probably don’t want her or I’ll be joining the hellhounds on the top of the kitchen cabinets, but Olivia says that their personalities keep swapping around in a dizzying way, and I can attest that the size differential has pretty much disappeared.  Although Fruitcake may still be technically the smallest he has the biggest tummy.  The biggest tummy.  Southdowner calls him The Bulge On Legs.  

Horsehair Braider

Do you just go around grinning uncontrollably at the mere thought? Puppy bliss… 

Yes, except for when a bolt of pure terror runs through me and I think I WHAT?  And it’s too late now.  I can’t change my mind.  I’ve already told the BLOG. 

Fiona

I’m definitely not laughing over here, honest!!!

And when can I come and snuggle puppy?  

ANY TIME.  You can be part of the SOCIALISATION PROCESS.  This is EVEN MORE IMPORTANT IN BULLIES than in most . . . um, normal . . . dogs, because they’re so . . . um.  They would take over the universe if they were not brainwashed from birth to believe that humans are brighter/stronger/know how to open the dog food containers better than they do.  I’ve been wondering if I might take it bell ringing.  I don’t think the hellhounds would have appreciated this much, but their socialisation was also a bit curtailed by the whole digestive thing.  But I keep thinking about Nemo trotting briskly and interestedly through the Birmingham train station—or Hazel, wearing a pink feather boa, looking grandly and calmly around Soho, and accepting the tribute of the passers-by as merely her due. 

nickithomas

I too like the look of Pavlova but it could be that she’s just the most photogenic! I do know that we will all love whichever one it turns out to be. 

Yes, good, thank you, my attitude exactly!  Once it is mine it will be MIIIIINE!!!!  And photoing critters is such a . . . um . . . crap shoot.  When I looked at that photo afterward I thought, oh, wow, lucky with that one!  One of the things that was interesting about this visit is that Southdowner was trying to teach me to recognise what is a good head in a bull terrier puppy—you know they will grow up to have those extraordinary, unique egg-shaped bull terrier heads—and I can see it at once in the white ones, but was totally confused by the colouring on the two tricolours.  It took holding each of them with her head in the crook of my elbow so the little wedge shape showed to begin to see what Southdowner was talking about.  And this photo does that too. 

Mockorange

OOh! Exciting! Since Croissant was the only one we didn’t get a full picture of in that batch, I’m suspecting she may be the one you end up with.  

LOL!  Yes, that thought also occurred to me!  I’m going to look through the photos again and see if I may have overlooked a reasonably good one of Croissant. 

Melissa Mead

What’s the reason for not getting a boy? You seem quite fond of Fruitcake.  

I am fond of Fruitcake.  I slithered into this thinking if I was going to get a bullie, which of course I’m not, I wanted a girl—when I’ve been talking carelessly about a puppy next year I’ve been talking about a girl—despite the complications of mixed genders as described yesterday.  And this litter is three to one, so having a girl left over is a much better bet. 

              But when I met Fruitcake the first time, only because this was a litter from a bitch that Southdowner bred and I was already in love with two of her dogs, and besides, you know, puppeeeeeez, I thought well actually I wouldn’t mind another boy, BUT I’M NOT GETTING A BULL TERRIER PUPPY (at least not this year), THIS IS ALL FANTASY, SO I CAN THINK ANYTHING I LIKE, INCLUDING THAT THE ONE MALE PUPPY HERE IS DARLING.  (But then so are the girls.)  And so long as I could avoid hierarchical difficulties with the hellhounds, why not a third boy?**, and DID I MENTION THIS IS ONLY FANTASY SO I DON’T REALLY HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT?  Southdowner kept saying firmly that it’s all about socialisation and having a male bullie wouldn’t be a problem with two male hellhounds.  But now that I’m actually on the firing line here for a puppy Southdowner and Olivia have suddenly gone all po-faced and say that bullie boys usually make bullie girls look tame and quiet and that I’d be better off with a girl.  Feh.  As I keep saying, I’ll love whoever I end up with . . . but it would amuse me a lot if all three girls are sold and there is only one leftover . . . boy. 

AJLR

All I will say – apart from Puppeeeeez! – is, I am not one bit surprised. 

Well I admit I’m not really surprised either.  You know how when you are in the process of making a big decision—or maybe you aren’t like this because you are a sane, mature grown up who, for example, doesn’t knit, and therefore hasn’t developed a yarn stash that needs its own house in only a little over a year—there’s both that sense of NOOOOOOO LIFE IS TOO COMPLICATED ALREADY followed by and all tangled up with the sense of OH NEVER MIND I’VE DECIDED AND THEREFORE I WANT IT NOW.   So.  Yeah.  If there was a puppy available now . . . MINE.  IT’S MINE. 

I hope you, the Hellhounds, and the soon-to-be Hellpuppy, have long and happy years together. 

Thank you!

* * *

* It’s a good time to be surviving a new puppy while Nadia’s on maternity leave 

** Except of course it would be nice to have a full length of tummy to rub again.  Male tummies are unduly short due to complications at the farther end.