Do not attempt to adjust the parental security control on your computer. The picture to your left is not adult content, it's just Bruno (on the right), sharing a couch with his beloved, Greta (ok, maybe she's a little too relaxed.

I realize I am a bad blogger. I do not rush to my computer, logon and immediately read, write or browse blogs. I feel this will change, as so much else has since meeting Bruno. I didn't even know how to blog before Bruno. He leads me places I did not know I needed to go. I'm still impressed by the way he called attention to the gas leak in our stove a couple of weeks ago.

Sometimes, though, he is just dog. Pure, 86 pounds of essence of dog. He and Greta (about whom I've not written much here, although she is just as essential in our household as Bruno has become) can be complete pests sometimes, running around the house, getting into shoes and books and whatever. They come in from our packed dirt backyard (their landscape choice), drink water and Bruno, if he hasn't knocked over his water dish, walks away from it with slobber cascading from his lips to the floor where it mixes with the dirt on his paws so he can leave an exact footprint map of his path from the kitchen to the sunroom. Cleaning those paws with wipes, mopping the kitchen repeatedly, it doesn't really matter. He leaves tracks no matter what. And, for a breed that isn't supposed to shed much, Bruno has taken to a kind of shrapnel approach to hair dispersement. In 24 hours he gives off so much hair that tumbleweeds actually form under the dining room table.

If he doesn't have a rawhide bone to work on, he works on whatever is handy. Most recently it was a cookbook I had carelessly left out on the coffeetable. It used to be a hardback. Bruno thinks it is better as a paperback. Greta in the meantime makes it a point to work on shredding the orthopedic, $100 dog bed we foolishly bought for Bruno. Five inches thick and about 45 inches square at the time we bought it, Bruno's bed is now about half its former size and looks a bit like the state of Louisiana. This took less than two weeks to accomplish. We'll not be replacing it anytime soon. We will probably need to start buying rawhide bones by the case, though.

Mind you, as I mentioned in a previous blog, I exercise with these dogs daily. We try to do three miles in on form or another. They also get to run around the backyard. They play hard. Greta is very fierce with Bruno, grabbing his loose folds of neck skin and really pulling. He just stands there as if to say "whatever." Then he casually pulls loose and takes hold of her. He could so easily break her neck in one shake. But he doesn't. In fact, he tenderly grooms her on the rare occasions they both sit still.

This weekend, Bruno was glued to my side at all times. Glued. Like I have smears of dog nose midthigh on the jeans I was wearing. I could barely move through the house without having to get past him. If I opened the oven to check on my cake, he checked on it with me. If I opened the door to the basement, he looked down there as well. If I went to the bathroom, well, you get the picture.

One last rant: Bruno has it in for cats. This is a problem since we have a cat, Gunther, who now lives on the second floor. We do elaborate "in-out" missions everytime Gunther wants to go out or come back in. He's gotten pretty good at figuring out when it's safe to make the dash. I oiled the frontdoor hinges which helped, since Bruno is a deep sleeper. If his nose doesn't detect an open door, he will now often not even notice that Gunther has been admitted or discharged. I wish I knew what to about Bruno's cat problem. Once, on The Dog Whisperer, I watched Cesar Milan sit with an innocent bunny rabbit on his lap whille the vicious, bunny-eating dog lay by his side, but I have no idea how he acheived this miracle.

OK. That's enough.

Next week, Bruno will be going in for his third, and hopefully last surgery to correct a condition called entropion. His hairy eyelid keeps rolliing in and irritating his eye. His eye looks pretty bad at this point. I thought, in fact, that something else entirely was now wrong with it, something that resulted in irreversible blindness. But I was wrong! This last procedure (I'm an optimist at heart) should fix the part that refused to respond to the first surgery and his eye, which now looks like the glowing red eyes of some cartoon evil monster, should heal. I want nothing more for this dog than for him to be able to see out of both of his beautiful eyes.

I have been waiting to send letters of thanks to everyone out there--and there are a lot of you--until Bruno's eyes were finally fixed. We've been working on this since January 20th so you may think my manners are abominable. Actually, I've just been busy walking, running, feeding, medicating cleaning up after, and otherwise making room in our lives for Herr Bruno. I promise personal replies to everyone when I feel like I can end on a "happily ever after" note.

I shall blog again with the results of Bruno's eye surgery. Many thanks to all of you who have helped us so far. BIG thanks to Dr. Pam Clary of Kingsbury Hospital, who has managed his care so generously and attentively and given wise and loving advice. And thanks to all of you who are out there doing something similar with beloved rescue dogs and cats of your own.