Introducing Loblaw

There is a new addition to the household of the Hungry Preacher.  Technically, he's still auditioning, but something very surprising would have to happen for him to get the boot.  His name is Loblaw, and here he is:

We have been realizing how old Poozle is getting, and figured it would be good to bring in a youngster while Poozle still has the intellectual capacity to pass on his wisdom and experience to the new blood.  But we weren't seriously shopping until I happened to have lunch with an old friend who told me that he had just returned a dog to the shelter because he was just too energetic to stay home by himself while both he and his wife worked full time.

It was a longshot, I thought, but my friend completely vouched for the dog's behavior and personality.  I started to move forward in the process, expecting it not to work out.  But things began to fall into place: Beth was more totally onboard than I thought she would be.  The dog was still available.  And he seems to like the girls.  So, it's fair to say that things are working out.  Barring a bite or some unforseen screw up with the paperwork, he seems to be a keeper.

He is definitely energetic, but we try to spend some time playing with him each day, and he especially likes running around in our basement.  And so far, he has been great with us and with the kids.  He's very playful--but still barks loudly and scarily when he hears something outside, which is a good thing as far as we're concerned.

The biggest problem we had with him was his name when we got him, which was "Bob," short for "Bob Newhart."  That didn't seem like a dog name to us, and we batted around a few ideas.  We seem to have landed on the name "Loblaw", which is the last name of a character on the TV show "Arrested Development", which Beth and I used to watch.  It still has the "ob" sound, so it's not a total shift for the dog, but it's more distinct and meaningful to Beth and me.

I mentioned that he likes the girls.  The girls are still warming up to him.  We made it a point to warn them about his energy level, and that he's about twice as big as either of them.  We also warned them about being respectful.  And we warned them about leaving stuff around for him to chew.  I think we succeeded in making them pretty uncomfortable around Loblaw pretty much all the time.  Oops.  They seem to be warming up, though, but they still saw fit to make nice little notes of instruction for our new friend:




"please do not chew on bunny"



"please do not come down"

Poozle has not taken on the role of mentor that we hoped he would, but he seems resigned to accept Loblaw as a fellow pack member, though probably Poozle's least favorite.  He's only gotten snippy with Loblaw a couple of times, and only when Loblaw doesn't exactly respect Poozle's boundaries--like when I was scratching Poozle's head and Loblaw came over and licked his face.  Here is a picture demonstrating the level of comfort that has already been established between the pups.

our younger daughter called this "a dog train"

Finally, I'm sure anyone who looked at that first picture of Loblaw is wondering the same things but is afraid to ask: "Is his head really that big?"  Truth be told, yes.  It's freaking huge.  You can't really tell how big it is from any of the above pictures, but here is one that should offer some perspective.



note the size of Loblaw's head compared to the size of the planet Earth

So that's the latest news on the latest addition to the fam.  I'm sure there will be additional mentions of Loblaw in future posts.  Until then...

-THP