Wine for the New Addition

Please welcome the newest member of our family: this little guy named Tuco.

We got him from Border Collie rescue about 3 weeks ago, and he's now 11 weeks old. In true puppy fashion, he has completely taken over our lives.

I have wanted a puppy since before i could talk, and when we weren't able to get one, I used to make my mom take me to a local pet store, and then would proceed to hold the puppies and cry.

Steve and I have been talking about getting a dog from practically the moment we met, and it took us 10 years to finally get one. You'd think that would have given us plenty of time to fully be prepared, but it seems to be one of those things in life for which one can never really be prepared.

The moment we got him home, we immediately felt at a total loss as to what the hell to do with him!

How much food do we feed him, and how often? How often does he need to pee? Poop? How often should we exercise him and for how long? What are all the vaccinations he needs? How much interaction can he have with people, places and other dogs before he's fully vaccinated? How do you control the desire to play tug of war with his leash, bark at us and eat my socks? What the hell is "crate training" and how does one do it? How do we take care of his coat, paws, teeth and ears? What the hell have we gotten ourselves into??!!

But gradually, as with everything, we have taken baby steps together and started to find our way.

The crate has turned out to be everybody's best friend, as the puppy seems to immediately relax and settle down the moment he goes in it, though the first few days were tricky, since the moment we walked away from him in the crate, he immediately started such a cacophony of whining and gibbering, you would have thought we had about fifteen different animals living with us instead of one.

This whining ranged from the chattering screech of a Gibbon in heat, then would give way to a sheep's bleating, and finally would settle down to a shivering quavering sigh, which would have been right at home on the fainting couch. He was like an episode of Wild Kingdom.

Housetraining has been pretty smooth as well, though getting up every few hours throughout the night to make sure he doesn't go in his crate, is not very fun.

And we have had a couple of accidents, all of which were our fault, as we let him out of his crate and let him get very excited before taking him outside to wee.

Two of these events occurred when I came home from work and he hadn't seen me in several hours, and the joy of our reunion proved too much for his little body and he wound up piddling on the floor.

I am ashamed to admit that there is a little bit of an ego boost in this: after all, when was the last time someone or some thing was so happy to see you they actually lost control of their bladder?

We have also been through the first vet visit, which started out very well with Tuco and the vet playing on the floor together, but then sadly took a wrong turn when the vet picked Tuco up and squeezed his as-yet-undescended-testicles to make sure they were where they should be.

After that Tuco moved as far away from the vet as he could without leaving the room, giving him a look over his shoulder which clearly said: "Dude. Really. Not cool."

All in all, I will say I think we are off to a pretty good start. Tuco now will sit, lie down and give a paw for a treat. He is clearly most excited about the paw trick, since he has started doing it completely unprompted, to both me and Steve as well as people he randomly meets on the street.

Really, it doesn't get much cuter than that.

My Wine for the New Addition is actually a cocktail that we serve at the restaurant where I work. It's called a Corpse Reviver #2, and it has gin, Lillet Blanc, Cointreau, lemon juice and a splash of Absinthe.

I am not normally a gin-lover, and sometimes the licorice flavor of Absinthe can be too much for me, but there is something about the combination of the ingredients that yields a delicious cocktail.

It's light, refreshing, slightly sweet, and the Absinthe gives it just the right taste of something special at the end.

It's just the pick-me-up one might need after a night of waking up with the piddling Gibbon-puppy, and I promise if you come by the restaurant I'll make you one, but first you have to give me your paw.