It's 7:00 and I have to get over to CVS to pick up Dad's newest medicine before they close so that I can deliver it before he freaks out about it and the dogs have to go out before I go and its raining and I open the door for Louis... and Henry chases him outside into the downpour. And they ran and ran. And ran.

So now I have to add "wash and dry the dogs" to my list of things to do tonight.

I'm... not having a good time these days. And the boys are just making everything so much harder.

It's really starting to feel like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

UPDATE 3:30AM: And I just let the dogs out (one at a time!) before bed and in the 2 minutes it takes to use my electric toothbrush Henry dug a hole in the mud and now has to have another shower before bed.... Grrr. It was just two minutes, Henry!

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Did everyone have a Merry Christmas? I guess I did, all things considered. I mean, so long as I ignore the fact that the Miami Dolphins collapsed in the second half and lost their 4th straight game, going 0-4 in December and demonstrating that despite some earlier success they are definitively not ready to be a playoff team for the 22nd year in a row. (Annual reminder: their last playoff win was in 2000.)

Yeah, ignoring that and the fact that I badly cut my thumb on the large carving knife while doing the dishes, the rest of the day went pretty well. It was in the wee hours of this morning that I ran into trouble. Or maybe I should say that it was Louis who ran into trouble for us all.

After watching Sunday Night Football go to overtime and spending an hour trying and failing to play online games with Friend James (the trouble seemed to be with his ISP), I noticed at about 1:30 in the morning that something smelled wrong in my room: the faint smell of burning plastic. That's never good.

I began sniffing my way around the darkened house for the cause, starting with the basement. It wasn't coming from my room. It wasn't the furnace which has been running all out for days to combat the 30-year historic cold. It wasn't in my studio where I had been painting finishing veneers earlier in the day. So I moved upstairs where the smell was indeed stronger. I thought maybe it was the Christmas tree lights, but no, they seemed fine. And It wasn't any appliance in the kitchen or anything electronic in Mom's office. I even grabbed a flashlight and checked outside to no avail. What *was* the source of that smell?

When I came back inside, I noticed that the flashlight wasn't a spotlight like it was outside but an illuminated beam, a fuzzy lightsaber. As a former Boy Scout, I quickly recognized this as a Very Bad Sign. The good news is that I could follow the flashlight beam to find the areas of thickening smoke.

The source, as it turns out, was behind the curtains separating the den from the sunroom that Mom uses for crafting. As is usual in the winter, the "sun" room was the coldest in the house, and she has been running an older model portable oil space heater day and night to keep the chill out. At this point, you've probably figured out where this is headed.

Context clues indicate that sometime while I was preoccupied with football or video games, my mischievous puppy, Louis, had taken a break from chewing up my new shoelaces and pajama bottoms to sneak behind the curtain — where he knew he wasn't allowed alone — and knocked over the heater. The sideways heater did not have an automatic shutoff, and worse, on its side it started leaking oil, oil that fortunately smoked before it flamed.

I uncovered the problem in time to prevent any further damage to life, limb, or property. (Sure, the house *smells* like burnt plastic and oil, but at least there's a house to smell.) I think from now on I'm going to have to keep Louis tied to me. And I'm going to recommend that Mom mounts her new space heater (with automatic shutoff!) to the floor!

Post-Christmas crisis averted!

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Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Henry and Louis.

Henry and Louis who?

This is no joke! Just let us in, already.

Louis bolted out the door while I was letting Henry into the yard solo to take care of his business, and when the pair of poodles eventually decided they were tired of rolling in every mud puddle they could find, this is what they looked like when they finally asked to come back in.

I don't think I've ever mentioned it here on the blog, but once upon a time, while I was running an errand in downtown Newnan with July and Victoria in the Jeep, a car pulled into the parking space beside me and the woman inside said she just wanted to say hello to the girls. "I breed poodles," she explained. "I used to breed whites, but now I only breed dark-colored dogs. I'll never have a white poodle again; it's just too much trouble to keep them white."

That's proving especially true for Henry. His favorite color is Georgia Red Clay.

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Today, the UGA Bulldogs won their first SEC Championship game since 2017 in dominating fashion. Hooray!

But the real news of the day is that I have a new dog.

Like Henry before him, this good boy is a rescue puppy whose first family couldn't care for him. His original name was Ricky, though his temporary foster parents discovered he didn't seem to know it. They renamed him Coco Puff, but he never really cottoned to that name, either. Mom decided we might as well call him something that sounded good alongside "Henry."

(Side note: I might have ambushed Mom with the idea of a new dog just yesterday, so she justifiably needed some appeasing before she would allow another standard poodle in her house run by Audrey the Hungry Havanese — whose birthday is tomorrow! If that means Mom gets to name my new dog, so be it.)

Therefore, allow me to introduce Louis, pronounced like a French king, unless you're my dad, who insists on saying it "the American way."

Of course, I'm particularly sensitive to whether Henry might get his feelings hurt by having a new dog in the house, so I woke up early (for me) to take Henry to the PetSmart in Peachtree City for an interview with his prospective new playmate. As it happens, the Peachtree City PetSmart is right beside a cemetery, and when Henry and Louis (nee Coco) politely paused their inaugural rollicking to let a group of funeral-bound mourners pet them, I was pretty sure we were going to be all right.

I'm quite pleased that Louis is a brown poodle, a first for my family. White poodles can be pretty, but you really have to keep them on their pedestal, especially on rainy days when playing with new puppies in the mud.

Immediately after this picture was taken, I introduced Louis to my bathtub. It was an eventful day, indeed.

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What am I most thankful for this year? One guess:

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Seasons are wasted on dogs.

The best part of this picture is that the orange setting sunlight keeps you from seeing how dirty my "white" poodle is.

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You can have your birthday or Christmas, but for my money, Independence Day is the best holiday. I love everything about it... except the fireworks.

The way I see it, you can have fireworks or you can have dogs. I always have and always will choose dogs.

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Henry chewed up one of my red bandanas, so I wrapped it around his neck as a badge of shame.

He turned it into a fashion statement.

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Henry had surgery today to have his testicles and dewclaws removed and a chipped tooth sanded down. As a reward, he was given this fashionable new collar to wear for the next two weeks.

Unfortunately, Henry's not not really into fashion. Unlucky dog.

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Henry's first spring!

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