The Meet and Greet

Oh, my big, gangly dog. He’s turned into a playful, excitable load of people and dog-friendly fun (unless you ask that one Verizon installation tech who was looking at him in all kinds of the wrong way and whose story we’ll save for a different day). But he’s awfully scary looking. I would certainly keep my distance if I hadn’t seen the way he darts into the house when the wind blows a leaf out of place. He’s tall and lanky and still hasn’t figured out how to move his body with any kind of agility. He faceplants daily; Clayton and I taunt him for it.

One of the main reasons that having a big dog made sense for us was that we are pretty active, and when we’re not, we thought those big brown eyes would guilt us into getting out and being active. And it worked. With Clayton’s long hours, I am Bryson Entertainer Extraordinaire. I have a handful of parks and trails that I prefer, and they’re all usually populated with other people and other dogs.

Bryson has not mastered how to calmly approach another canine. He has mastered giving himself an asthma attack, tearing my shoulder out of its socket and terrifying other dog owners with his excitement over sniffing that new butt. As soon as he sees another dog, boyfriend will lower his head–a sign of submission, I hear, but looks like he’s hunting his next meal–and zero in on this New Best Friend. I try to correct him with the leash, but he’s so completely fixated (a big fat no-no in Dog Whisperer land), nothing seems to work. As we get closer, the other dog owners always react the same way. Their forearms flex so hard I can see the muscles straining. They pull their dog’s leash tighter so the pooch is really close to them, especially if it’s a tiny dog. And they stare. They stare right at my harmless, lovable boy like he’s a ferocious beast, not even trying to hide the terror and judgement in their eyes. And of course B-money pulls toward the other dog even harder like it’s a really fun game we’ve all just now invented in which licking that dog’s nose is certain victory, which makes them flinch or walk completely off the path to avoid us. But he just wants to PLAY! Then I smile. Like, Hollywood style. As in, my dog could eat your dog in one bite, but he absolutely won’t because he’s crazy friendly and don’t you feel like a tool now that we’ve passed and your shi-poo was the one yapping like a maniac. You know, one of THOSE smiles.

All that to say, I was very curious about how a recent trip to Tampa was going to play out considering the recent arrival of this furry nugget into my parents’ lives. Meet Wilson:

To answer your questions, yes, that is the second cutest puppy of all time and no, he did not file a restraining order from my snuggles by the time I left.

Anyway, B-dizzle shared a living space with him for about 10 days. Which, in dog years, I’m pretty confident equates to eternity and forever for all of time. The night I arrived, Bryson and I had been in the car for 13 hours. Dude was pent up. And then out of the house comes the Wilson-ator. All aglow from the porch light looking like Bryson had died and gone to whatever dog heaven is waiting for him, where he is allowed to just throw himself out of back seats and onto the unsuspecting fuzzy forehead of 3-month old puppy friends. He was out of control, in every way, and terrified the little guy. Cut to several walks, controlled meetings and forced nether-region-sniffing later, and we have two of the most adorable besties you’ve ever seen. They played around outside for hours at a time, rolling around in the dirt without a care in the world, never wanting to leave each other. And when we took them to the park, they were in sweet, kissy love in the car. Lookie:

I just really needed to talk about how good Bryson can be sometimes. Because it’s easy to forget when he’s growling at a squirrel for 15 straight minutes or tripping me as I’m trying to cut down my 3-mile pace or throwing up right at the exact moment I’ve found the idea for that tag line.

And, well, mainly just to say I told you my dog would not eat your puppy, Mom.