"Wait, is he asleep?..."

This is the thought that typically goes through my head when I sit down to do anything (i.e. eat, check email, skype, etc.). Because apparently at this stage, little Rosco tends to be somewhat needy, or in the very least, he needs some direction in order to keep himself occupied. He's like a toddler in that way; when he's awake, it's always "I'm booored!" or "Hey lookit me!". But he has started growing fond of his chew bones, much to my approval. Better the bones than my flip-flops.

Anyhow, I have been spending all this time getting Rosco accustomed to life on the hill, and I forgot to update the blog (big surprise, I know). So I figure I'll just give you a rundown of some interesting factoids/anecdotes related to the pup. Let's start with a picture:

So here's the little guy as of today. D'aww. I assure you, his eyes are not normally blue; it seems that he will not be plagued by "devil dog" pictures, but rather "Frank Sinatra-esque 'Blue-eyes'". This seems infinitely better. Unless it means there's a problem with his eyes...hm...

That pillow he's laying on is his. We gave him Melissa's old one after buying some new, less stinky ones. Simply put, he loves that thing (sometimes literally). And on occasion he even sleeps on it like a human, on his side and everything. He can be a real cutie sometimes.

One common time where he's not so cute is when we have to leave him home in his kennel, like for church or just going to the grocery store. Rosco has such unbelievable separation anxiety, it's terrible. I've started to figure out that the less fanfare I make about leaving, or the quicker I leave, the faster the crying subdues. Yes, he cries. And it's terrible.

Luckily, he's not a total homebody. Three of our neighbors have dogs, so he usually gets an opportunity during the day to play with one or more of them. Since he's the smallest right now, I think he has a little bit of a Napoleon complex going on, what with the extra vocalization when they play, but I think he'll grow out of it. 

Speaking of growing, I had to move his collar to the next hole the other day, so he must be growing, even though it's hard to tell when you spend time continuously around him. He's definitely not a timid little furball huddling under the couch anymore. Good times. Mostly. Just not the poop times.

To close, here's another picture of the little fella.

I don't remember how we got him to sleep in here like this, but it's a cute picture anyways. He was very resistant to the kennel pre-pillow.

I'll try to do another update soon with some Melissa-related news. Take care!

-Eric

ROSCO!

It's probably a good thing that humans have a nine month gestation period. It gives the parents a good deal of time to get ready for the baby; you read books, set up a room, buy new clothes and such. Sometimes, getting a pet is nothing like that. Sometimes, you just suddenly have a dog.

This is what happened to us. At 4 o'clock yesterday, we were puppyless. One hour later (after a quick phone call from our land lord), he was already peeing on the tile. The call from my landlord was actually pretty surreal:

(me, sitting in the CAC watching YouTube)
[rings]
Me: hello.
Trevor (LL): hello Eric, are you home now?
Me: uh, no, I'm on campus.
Trevor: alright. I found a puppy. Meet me at the front gate in 10 minutes.
Me: uh, okay.

That was basically it. 10 minutes later (ha! try 25. 10 minutes is never 10 minutes here), we were in the car meeting our new little fella.

Lately, he's been fluctuating between napping for 20 minutes and running around like a crazy for 45 minutes. Today will be the adventure that is bringing him down to campus (I'll probably have to hold him most of the time.

Woot puppy!

-Eric

Yikes.

(...)

(...tumbleweed...)

[scoots in front of laptop]

Erm, well, hi there. It's been a while, hasn't it? No excuses, I just failed to blog for, oh, about a month and a half. But in my defense, there wasn't a whole lot going on here in Dominica. Melissa was studying non-stop, and I was finished with SP stuff. But it was mainly just laziness on my part.

But now we are back on the island after a nice exciting break in Colorado with the Long's! I got to see my family, Melissa's family, Melissa's sister's (new) husband's family, all good. There was even snow! And it stuck around too (it typically melts depressingly soon). All of our flights took off without any major hitches, which we're also thankful for. We found out that a lot of flights were getting delayed or rescheduled due to bad weather.

Speaking of weather, this place is WET. It has rained a lot lately. You see, the way it typically rains here is clouds roll in from over the mountains (read: little to no warning) and it rains in torrents for 10 minutes. Then the clouds leave. Things dry a little in the sun. An hour later, it happens again. This is all fine, assuming we're in the rainy season. But we're not. This is (allegedly) the DRY season. *Shrugs* The only real downside is that the one thing we forgot to buy and bring back with us to the island are new raincoats. But our umbrellas are still working fine. No worries.

Hopefully none of you have been worrying too much about Melissa; she passed with no problems, and is now a second-semester med student! Her first block is Neuro, which I understand has to do with brains and whatnot. From what she was telling me today, it wasn't that bad. I think it's one of those subjects where you have to memorize a ton of terms, but she knew a lot of them this morning in class I guess.

Well, that does it for me today. I'll have more to talk about later this week, I'd imagine, what with club sign-ups and meetings and whatnot. With any luck I should be able to get into a better rhythm for blogging this semester/year. Thanks for reading, people.

-Eric