One Boston Terrier, One Christmas

January 28th, 2012

Here we are in a brand new year - 2012 dawned here (for us) with one of the mildest Christmas seasons we've ever experienced. Very little in the way of snow (just a "skiff" to make it a little white) and temperatures hovering around zero, or above. That's very unusual in our part of the world, but January is playing the "catch-up" game. The last couple of weeks have been up and down - very cold (like -25) to quite mild (+8), and we've had a little more snow, too. Nothing like we should have at this time year, but enough that we've had to shovel at least a couple of times.
That's a far cry from having to shovel one to three feet of snow almost every day, and most of us here are enjoying the "easy" winter so far.

I hope y'all had a great holiday season. We had a good Christmas and quiet New Year. We invited my mother-in-law to spend some time with us over Christmas so she arrived early in the day on Christmas Eve. Both of my daughters and their families dropped in to spend part of Christmas Eve with us, and included in the family this year is a Boston Terrier named "Lola".  Lola was just about a year old right before Christmas, so it's her first "family" Christmas with us.  She's still a lot like a puppy, and she's not very big, but she can be very rambunctious and does have the happy ability to make us laugh, on a regular basis.

Her big sad eyes and expressive face let you know just how she feels most of the time; there are moments where I swear she's grinning at me, and other times when it's obvious that she is disdainful of our attempts to make her perform for the camera.

We discovered a short two weeks before Christmas that Lola likes Christmas music. I'd found this little stuffed snowman at one of the dollar stores, and when you squeezed his tummy, he sang a Christmas song. Not one of those "tinny" sounds from the musical cards, but an actual song. I thought it was cute and bought it with the hopes of enticing my aging cat to play a little. She, however, wasn't at all impressed (as evidenced by these images). The cat turned up her tail and walked off to her pillow, not failing to let me know what she thought of the snowman.

When Lola visits us, she loves to try and get hold of my cat's toys (ones she's had since she was a kitten - they were her first toys) but my cat refuses to play with them after Lola's had them, so I try to keep them out of Lola's way. The reason Lola likes them is because they are soft-stuffed toys, and since the snowman was a stuffed toy, I figured she might play with it. As I was about to head "next door" (where my one daughter lives) with the snowman I realized Lola was on our front porch ... in her new winter coat (reminds me a lot of George of the Jungle - brown monkey suit with ears). So I put the toy on the porch and Lola grabbed it up without hesitation. She didn't however, stay around long (I guess she thought I'd try to take it back) and ran immediately to her own porch and tried to get in the door, which nobody over there would open. She sat on the porch protecting her "baby" from anyone who tried to get too close.

That was when I decided to get Lola another similar toy as her Santa gift - the dollar store had the same toy in a Santa Clause and a Reindeer. I wrapped it loosely in paper and put it aside until Christmas Eve. When Lola arrived for Christmas Eve she was decked out in her Christmas jammies. We coaxed her into posing for a couple of shots, but a couple was all I got before she wandered off to the livingroom. Attempts at getting her to sit for usable Christmas photos in Christmas props went wildly awry, and Lola made it pretty clear (in no uncertain terms) that she was completely unimpressed with our Christmas headgear and collar. All we got from that was a couple of shots with Lola bearing a disgusted look on her expressive face.

She also discovered a new body in our house - in the person of my mother-in-law. Lola had discovered "great-grandma" and immediately took to her, trying to lick her to death. Trying to get Lola to keep her tongue in her own mouth and out of yours is extremely difficult, and her body never stops wiggling, unless it's asleep. Great-grandma took it all in stride (she's a definite dog-lover) and parked Lola on her lap for a cuddle.

In the early evening, we sprung Lola's Santa gift from the pile and let her open it. While she needed a little help, she managed to get Santa out of the packaging and into her mouth. Lola had learned from the snowman-baby how to grab his middle and bite down to make him play his song all by herself. She had played the snowman song so much that the batteries were dead by Christmas. One squeeze of Santa's middle and she new just what to do - the rest of the evening was spent listening to Santa singing as Lola happily bit and tossed, fetched and bit poor old Santa!