Puppy Love

As of Wednesday, at 10 1/2 weeks, Mira weighs about 23 pounds. She is growing quickly and she is one well-muscled puppy. If that seems big, compare it to Mac, an English Mastiff whose growth chart is posted on mastiff-forum.com: 30 pounds at 10 1/2 weeks. Mira gained 2 pounds in about three days, so I am expecting a higher than average growth week for her. Thus far, she’s grown a steady 3 pounds a week. Of course, if this trend continues it means she’ll be over 90 pounds by 8 months. Good thing I know I want a big dog.

So far she is quite smart and eager to please. I am not sure how she learned “sit,” but she does so on command almost immediately. “Down” hasn’t occurred to her yet, so we just started learning that one and she likes to “Come,” but as with all the commands I need to make sure she will do it every time, not just when she wants to. I have to keep up the training, she’s already started to anticipate the command. For example, I make her sit before she gets her food but she does it automatically now. So the current effort is to put the bowl just out of reach and have her sit and wait until I say okay to start eating it. A work in progress. As soon as the vet clears her for being around dogs, I will start taking her to training classes. A co-worker recommended a woman who helped train their Bernese Mountain Dog, so I will look into that.

In the meantime, the quest for something more than puppy love continues. -grins evilly at the pun- I am making an effort to be pro-active this time and not limiting to myself to what I really want, which is to date a woman who lives in the same town. One of the few bonuses of areas with a higher population is that there are simply more options. Particularly if you’re going to be as picky as I am and avoid picking up women who are overly fond of either booze or transubstantiation.

I know that I should keep an open mind and not limit myself quite so much, but I will be honest, I am afraid of the consequences. But I have dated conservative Christian women a couple times now, (my last two “official” relationships, in fact), and it hurt to be judged critically for the values I didn’t share. My last girlfriend, I loved her family as well, and in spite of helping them paint their house, mowing their yard, and being otherwise helpful, they couldn’t see past what they disapproved of. My ex was so afraid of getting disowned that when her father treated her like a child instead of the woman she was and demanded she never see me again, she chose fear over love. So if I am a bit tentative, forgive me.

Ideally, I would rather meet Ella face to face, get to know her in person and come to appreciate her before we started dating. Even meeting her face to face, recognizing attraction and chemistry immediately and moving forward from there would be better than meeting someone online. But, pardon the utter practicality of this analogy, if you have a nail gun available and you still decide to build a house with a hammer, you are just making it hard on yourself. So, I will continue to keep the online dating option open for now.

Those are the two things of the main things on my mind these days, Mira and potential romance. Beyond that, I want a Forerunner, my sailboat, a new job, and to write sci-fi/fantasy novels and publish them on Kindle. Suppose I should get on the writing part if I want to get around to the publishing part.

C’est ma vie. Enough for now.

-m0rg4n