Our dog Diego

I've mentioned somewhere in a previous post that Lars adopted a rescue dog for Lauren. Diego is a cocker spaniel mix, and although we originally thought he was probably 3-4 years old when we got him, there are many signs that he's actually much younger, probably still in his first or second year.

Overall Diego has been a very loving and caring dog. He loves attention, and he loves playing with Lauren. He's a pushover and very gentle. The only problem is he's still young so he's got a chewing fetish still, and he'll chew at anything he can get his hands on. That means when we leave him in the backyard, we have to make sure we don't leave anything valuable in the backyard with him.

Diego has already chewed through Lauren's kiddie pool, her Little Tikes Dora car, her play Dora cell phone and lots of other knick knacks we've got stored in the backyard. Oh and in case you haven't guessed, we named him Diego after Lauren's other favorite TV show.

Having Diego made me think of all the other dogs that have been a part of my life, and there haven't been many. The earliest encounter was when I was about Lauren's age. There's a great picture of my playing with a little puppy when we still lived in Taiwan. In that picture I seem so happy with the little puppy.

My next encounter with a dog wasn't until I was in high school and even then it was only an imaginary dog. Being the geek that I was, I hung out with geeks as well. My best friend Rob, was the math genius of the high school, and both of us walked around the halls of the high school with huge overloaded bags of books. Rob carried his in a large black bag over his shoulder. One day when we were in 11th grade or so, I remember the strap to his bag broke. and he ended up dragging the bag by the strap behind him so that the bag slid across the floor. From the moment that happened he always referred to that bag as his dog. It became a running joke within our set of friends. The truth of the matter was he had to make do with the bag. None of us came from wealthy families and I know things were tough for him, as he lived with just his dad and brother. But referring to that bag as Rob's dog gave us lots to laugh about and plenty to reminisce about years later.

I did have another dog later that was also a rescue. Rusty was a golden retriever and was saved since he had thyroid problems and his owner was going to put him down as he was already at least 13 years old. He survived at year and half longer and had a pretty happy life, before he really was too sick to save.

And that brings us to Diego, our cocker-spaniel mix, who likes to chew everything! Lauren loves him, and she loves to pretend to call him up on her play phone and talk to Diego. When her day care provider asks her what Diego is doing at home, Lauren will reply with "Diego cooking" or "Diego cleaning house" and everyone at day care gets a good laugh out of that. Lauren does get upset when Diego chews up her things, but she'll have to learn to keep her stuff away from Diego until he gets a little bigger and stops this phase he's in.