The kids weren't going to get the puppy they had been wishing for for so long...

Well... (I took a deep breath)... maybe....

From there I can't remember how it came about that an hour or so later I found myself looking out the kitchen window to see Dani walking across the backyard, struggling to carry a squirming black animal that looked more like a small calf.

That couldn't be the puppy we had picked out! That puppy was a little black thing....

But this was him.

Dani lumbered him into the house and set him down in the kitchen - and it was as if she had just opened the door and let in a small tornado.

He tore from room to room like a black Tasmanian Devil. The kids were playing Monopoly in the library and he barreled them over - and immediately pooped on the only piece of carpeting left in the house (the cat having taken care of all the rest. The one saving grace of that being he made the cat's efforts seem entirely tolerable by comparison).

He tore around the living room, up across the back of the coach and down again. A black blur -

...out to the kitchen...

...back around the library...

...around the kitchen table again...

...another circuit up and over the couch.

Poor Pepe.

He was terrified, cowering on the couch with a blanket pulled over his head. "Why did you have to put our name on the list!" he kept wailing from underneath the blanket.

Of course the dog immediately jumped up on the couch and, in typical puppy exuberance, started gnawing on the fluffy pile of blankets - and Pepe's head. Well, for a second or two anyway - and then he was off to create some little bit of chaos somewhere else.

He peed in the dining room.

He peed in the upstairs hallway.

He pooped on the stairs.

He jumped up on any kid that moved and chomped his jaws around their very bite- sized limbs.

I am not exactly sure what I had in mind when I thought of getting a dog - but this wasn't it!

What could we have been thinking of? What had we done?!!!

And, just to top things off - the kids weren't even sure they liked him! (I guess this wasn't exactly what THEY had in mind either!)

The next morning Dani was at work and I was just about to step into the shower when I heard screaming from down in the living room. Quick, I wrap a towel around myself, and tear down the stairs. The dog had "attacked" Marcela. He was just playing, but poor Marcela doesn't out weigh him by much - and her teeth aren't near as big or sharp! She just stood where he had left her by the stairs, crying, and her legs shaking.

I managed to calm both the dog and Marcela down, all the while thinking this was going to be another long day.

I did manage to get my shower, and when I came back down again Blackie - as we decided to name him - was still playfully jumping around, but not hurting anyone. I was standing by the couch asking if everything was okay when I felt this sprinkling on my toes. "That's odd," I thought to myself vaguely, "I wonder what that could be..."

Blackie was peeing on my foot.

Update: It's coming on Christmas 2010, and Blackie is still kicking. Well, as well as he can with the arthritis in his back legs... he's deaf too... and one ear flops over... just had a bad case of fleas... and worms... and he still runs away every chance he gets! Some time in 1996, defintely around Christmas!