In a Glass Case of Emotions

So tired. Can't believe another weekend is over and we're back to it tomorrow morning...

Oscar is definitely keeping our schedules a bit...out of the ordinary. Karen and I, we're pretty boring. We don't like to get up at 3 in the morning and go out to party, but there are a lot of nights when that's the exact schedule Oscar is on. And let's not talk about the little gift Oscar creates for us every single morning at 6:30, on the dot, like clockwork. I know that a lot of people reading this blog get up at 6:30 normally and thus have no sympathy, but I don't get up at 6:30 and so it's real early for me. Parenthood, man, it's rough.

Anyways, I give you:

The Many Moods of Oscar: A Selection




Here we see Oscar in an earnest, thoughtful moment. Meticulously chewing on a toy, an activity he engages in when he can't find fingers or electrical cords to gnaw on or weird things to lick. (Does the dishwasher inexplicably taste really good? If not, then why does he always go and lick it? What about that one spot on the wall in the bedroom? My sandals? The handle on the drawer of the entertainment center?)



In this shot we find the ferocious young French bulldog on the attack. Or defense. I'm not exactly sure what he intends by this move, actually. What he does is, he puts his head really low to the ground with his front paws out ahead of him, and he sticks his butt way up in the air. Then he sort of fakes like he's lunging forward, but instead he jumps backwards, swatting a paw vaguely in the direction he's looking. So he looks like he's very ferocious, but in fact he's moving backward. Maybe intentionally, maybe not. I saw him challenge a suitcase in the bedroom earlier today, and the showdown ended when he bumped into the far wall behind him, a good 5-6 feet away from where he started his stare-down. After that he sort of came to his senses and walked away, but he really gave that suitcase a wary look as he walked out--"Yeah, suitcase, it's a good thing for you that wall got in the way. I think you know how it was going to end if you and I had to throw down. I think you KNOW."



This is a picture of sad, remorseful Oscar. It's how he looks when he's done something bad.


HA! Just kidding. Oscar is a remorseless eating and pooping machine. He never feels bad about anything at all, ever. We're doing this whole "Power of Positive Dog Training" thing where all the training is based on praising and rewarding him when he does good things, but not doing anything when he does bad things because he doesn't understand when we say stuff like "No!" and "Bad dog!" and it only gets him all excited and confused. I'm not sure how he understands positive reinforcement and not negative reinforcement, but that's why I've never written any award-winning books about dog training but some other much smarter people have.

Anyways, the upshot is that when he does something good, like go to the bathroom on his papers, we get really excited and we praise him and give him a treat. And when he takes a dump behind the leather chair in the living room, we...just totally play it cool and act like nothing happened. It's a world without sin for that little guy. And somewhere out there, Bill Bennett is feverishly working on his own dog-training manual to combat all this liberal namby-pamby moral doggie relativism.



Last we have a bit of Oscar sleeping in what Karen calls the "puppy or chicken?" pose. I actually had to crop the photo down a bit, because his back legs are just flopped down and Oscar's...manhood...is all just out there, for the world to see. He's not modest. At all. Like I said, it's a world without sin for Oscar. No fig leaf for that little dude in his Garden of Eden. And he really has nothing to worry about, because unlike Adam, Oscar has a wildly over-protective Karen out there to obsess over every bit of food he eats and keep him away from "people food" like forbidden apples. Dude is golden.

Cary