{"id":14054,"date":"2016-04-12T16:20:18","date_gmt":"2016-04-12T16:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=14054"},"modified":"2016-04-12T16:21:38","modified_gmt":"2016-04-12T16:21:38","slug":"puppy-tales-part-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=14054","title":{"rendered":"Puppy Tales, Part 18"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/kitty.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-13244\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13244\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/kitty.png\" alt=\"kitty\" width=\"220\" height=\"123\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Our learning curve about Toby the Puppy keeps us alert.<\/p>\n<p>Readers of this blog know that my wife and I have been lifelong cat lovers. At this writing, we no longer have cats in our family. Our 14-year-old female alley cat, Mittens, died on Leap Day of this year. We miss her terribly.<\/p>\n<p>But our puppy, well, he&#8217;s keeping us in stitches.<\/p>\n<p>This morning we took Toby to the veterinarian to receive a microchip in his neck. We thought it would require a bit of minor surgery: an injection to deaden the feeling in his skin, a small incision, an insertion of the chip and then &#8230; <em>presto! <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Oh, no. It&#8217;s even less invasive than that. The vet tech said all she did was insert the chip through an oversized hypodermic needle. Poof! That&#8217;s it. He&#8217;s now registered <em>in case<\/em> he gets lost and someone picks him up.<\/p>\n<p>Then my wife asked: &#8220;Why does he keep peeing everywhere when we take him for walks? Is that normal?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yes, the tech said. &#8220;He&#8217;s marking his territory,&#8221; she explained. Male dogs do that. The pee on everything. Bushes. Curbs. Rocks. Light posts. Yep, fire hydrants.<\/p>\n<p>I guess it never dawned on me that our pooch felt the need to mark his territory. I have watched enough Animal Planet and PBS &#8220;Nature&#8221; programs to know that male lions and tigers do it in the wild. But, hey, they have a serious need to let other male lions and tigers know who&#8217;s boss, correct?<\/p>\n<p>Toby weighs about 10 pounds. He is extremely sweet. He doesn&#8217;t need to prove his male puppyhood to anyone, or so I would have thought.<\/p>\n<p>Silly me.<\/p>\n<p>Boys, I reckon, will be boys.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our learning curve about Toby the Puppy keeps us alert. Readers of this blog know that my wife and I have been lifelong cat lovers. At this writing, we no longer have cats in our family. Our 14-year-old female alley cat, Mittens, died on Leap Day of this year. We miss her terribly. But our &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=14054\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Puppy Tales, Part 18<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3565,6129,6128],"class_list":["post-14054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-pet-ownership","tag-puppies","tag-toby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14054"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14057,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14054\/revisions\/14057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}