The Anatomy of a Puppy

Our sweet puppy is experiencing his first Christmas, unfortunately this post has nothing to do with that.

This is all about the precious features of our loving, gentle and playful pup.

Lets start with paws
These rough little feet are used mostly for stabilizing his nylabone and then for walking. He also give his "sign of good faith" and some seriously cute nose scratching (you'll see this later).

His nose, some people just call it "white spots" but here at the Latin Teacher house, we call it "Powered Sugar". You'll see we have syrupy sweet names for everything, and that's the way we like it, so there! This was something that we didn't really pay attention to when we first rescued Buck, but it is something we have grown to love and enjoy.

Name tags. These can be heard a mile away. They have a distinctive sound that I can recognize really well. It has both Latin Teacher and my phone numbers on a shiny red bone, and when it hits the rabies vaccine tag that the Dr. Wilson said we had to put on, it makes a magnificent sound. Some people will put a sliencing rubber thing on their dogs' tags. If we did that, we would never know where he was, especially at night.


A nose. This is one of the most powerful and influential piece of our precious pup. He can smell a stick of butter one room over, will sniff every thing possible while on the greenway/sidewalk/parking lot/ any surface really. He also can pinpoint everything and anything you are eating. It's kinda pink, mostly black, and almost always wet and cold. We love it, I don't mind admitting I've kissed it a few times...

So this isn't the best picture, and you might not recognize the area, but this is the diamond on the top of precious pup's head. We think it somehow relates for aforementioned "powered sugar" but we don't really care, we love it all the same.

Now for the real money makers, the ears. These ears are fantastic. To say that they were the only reason we love this dog so much would be a complete lie. But they don't hurt either. They are super soft, velvety and attract an insane amount of dirt and gunk. But it is all worth it when you run your hands overs these jewels. They one of the defining features of his houndessness, other than his stubbornness, but that does photograph well.

Then there is this. If you have ever met our sweet thing, you would know him and his tail are of two different minds. This tail can knock anything down especially off coffee tables and makes quite a sound when hitting walls, cabinets, doors, floors, people, etc. Having a puppy with a tail like this allows us to apologize to the parents of small children (tail whacking in their tiny faces), other dog owners, or just random people in general. It's a wonderful conversation starter and we have been know to apologize for spilled drinks (or Buckley drinking out of people's beer/wine/soda/ milk/coffee... good thing he isn't picky right?)

When you put these qualities together, this is what you get:

Cuteness! The wonderful pleasure of looking a squirming, grunting, upside down tan puppy. We sometimes find him at at the foot of out full sized bed in this exact pose... I think he's taking a little more room than absolutely needed.