Ya, I meant ‘Puppy Therapy’.

But, c’mon, it’s a Monday and it is actually snowing where I am, and I’m a little sigh-ish about that, so I decided to go all obfuscation-atory on you.

Which is, like, when you are being all confusing and unclear on purpose, like when you use hoity-toity or obscure words unnecessarily.

Which is why ‘Eschew Obfuscation’ is one of the best bumper stickers I have ever seen.

And you will look it up and find out that ‘eschew’ means ‘avoid’ or ‘shun’ and maybe you too will like enjoy the irony in that phrase.

But I also like it because it sounds like someone sneezed and then said, ‘obfuscation’.

(Which, c’mon, is why you like it now too).

But anyway, and back to the point…

Puppy Therapy!

It’s a thing.

No, it really is.

Because when Mac and Half-Kid Jack were attending college down in Kentucky, during finals there would be puppies brought in so that the students could cuddle them (and, c’mon, you know that the professors were puppy-fying themselves too).

The idea was that the puppies would provide stress relief because there were very expensive neuro-scientific studies that said so.

The people who commissioned those studies could have paid me though, because I already knew that puppies relieve stress.  And also, maybe my kids’ college tuitions could have been lowered by that amount.

Then I would be uber-rich and be able to buy anything I wanted.

Like lots of puppies.

So, after last week’s stresses involving the smashed up car, Grampa’s bionification, Fred’s suspected stroke, and the aftermath of all those things….guess what I got to do?

Oh, ya.

Under the guise of practicing my photography skills (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more…), I visited HRH Princess Blaze’s and Marshal Dillon Dingle’s breeder and…

drumroll…..

Puppies!

Oh don’t I know it. She is very cute.

And then there are these…

Right? And that’s Marshal Dillon Dingle’s little brother on the left and his little sister on the right.

JoHn was so excited that the light of his life – not me, but Marshal Dillon Dingle – had a sister that he pleaded for her.

Luckily she is already reserved and beloved by a woman named Julie.

And lucky Julie that I didn’t smuggle her out under my sweatshirt!

Cute right. And BIG. AND she is a female… here is her brother:

I called him ‘Chunk’.

Word is that they were born on the day that the Patriots won the Superbowl and they are part of the ‘B’ litter (my friend’s first litter every was the ‘A’ litter, and it took her, like, three years to get to the ‘Z’ litter.  Then she started all over again.  So really, this is the BBB litter because this is her third trip through the puppy litter alphabet). So that is ‘Brady’ (who really should be ‘BBBrady’) on the left, and my friend didn’t have a good B name for the girl (probably because she didn’t know all the first names of the Patriots’ cheerleaders, because why would she (Sexist… (okay, I don’t know them either)).

But anyway, I suggested ‘Bridget’ because Bridget Moynahan is the mom of Tom Brady’s first child, before he married Giselle Bundgen.

I don’t think the puppy would be scandalized because Tom and Bridget didn’t get married.

But, then again, she might grow up a little wary of Brazilian puppy supermodels.

So maybe my friend’s ideas of ‘BBBramble’ or ‘BBBriar Rose’ would be better.

I’ll call her to let her know.

And here are a few more of the puppies and they really were therapeutic.

But.

Then I turned to the older dogs.

I call them “The Ladies”.

I have a thing for old dogs. Always have.

This is Kiki, also known as Kiddie vom Kirschental with lots of letters after her name, like HGH and KKL1 and LBZ.  I don’t know what they all mean, but I know who Kiki is to me.

The Grande Dame.

The Beautiful Old Lady of the pack.

Grandma Kiki.

She is 14 years old right now and my friend says she needs to last forever.

 I don’t blame her.

And then there’s Bunny. Her big deal name is Brielle von Traumhof.  We call her, “Her Royal Highness” and, yes, you guessed it, she is the mother of HRH Princess Blaze.

I love the older dogs.

They’ve earned their spots on the treasured settee…

 Sometimes curling up with a good book…

Puppies cause my insides to erupt, spewing instant smiles onto my face, and a sense of glee released.

I would never eat them up, but that phrase, “I want to eat them up” always comes to mind (why is that? Eating puppies would be so gross. Babies too.)

But there’s something about old dogs that teases something soft, and patient out of my heart.

I don’t want to eat up old dogs.

I want to meet them, greet them carefully, and show them all kinds of affection.

They’ve given to their humans for a lifetime, the best of themselves.

And, sure, the worst of themselves… at least as judged by us (“Don’t eat that dead thing!”), not them (“Yum! A dead thing!”).

Puppies bring me joy.

And I want to bring joy to old dogs (whatever old dogs’ version of joy is (except dead things)).

Quid pro quo?

I dunno.

But with all the joy an old dog has brought to the world, and his or her people?

It sounds like a fair deal to me.

Thanks for readin’.

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