A New Alliance

We are all missing Harry Potter bit.

There have been a couple of things to soften the blow, though. First, a giant bone.

Second, a new friend.

Enemies unite!

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Hogwarts School of Dog Obedience

Harry Potter has been taking obedience classes through Urban Tails and Friends for Life. I want to refer to it as Hogwarts School of Dog Obedience. But I won't. Except for those two times where I just did.

I can't promise he will never, ever jump on you in sheer excitement.  I can promise that he is much better behaved!

Also, he graduated!

From Hogwarts! (Oops.)  If you are looking for a smart, sweet boy consider giving Harry Potter a home.

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I Totally Helped! (I Swear.)

Despite my kvetching about the kitchen and the bathroom, we really *have* been making progress.  Especially lately. In case you are just catching up, our bathroom went from this

to this.

Now we are starting to nice it up again. We paid to have it tiled (because look at all of those itty bity tiles. Would you want to install all of those?!  No, definitely not.)

Then we installed drywall.

(Despite the way this looks, I totally helped. A lot.)

(I mean, seriously, I really did help. I swear.)

Then Eddy did some unconventional out of doors washing of our old toilet.

It wasn't dirty when it was in the house, but it has been sharing the houseboat with the dogs for the last few months, so it was pretty ick. We (alright, just Eddy) assembled furniture.

(Look, even Harry Potter cone head worked more on this bathroom than I did.)

Then we (I!) painted and started installing stuffs.

(See! I totally helped! FYI, don't wear red during photo shoots in your new purple bathroom. Just don't do it.)

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Symmetrical Dogs

The thing about having two pit bulls is that (when they are not running at top speed through the house, destroying everything in their wake) they sometimes do adorably symmetrical things.

Norman and Harry Potter can even be used to teach the three types of symmetry. There's reflection symmetry:

Rotational symmetry:

And a whole heck of a lot of translation symmetry:

Symmetrical dogs: a perfectly legitimate argument for fostering a pit bull.

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Happy Tails To You

So, Harry Potter has happy tail. It's a common problem among pit bull breeds. Basically he wags his tail so emphatically without regard to what it might be smacking into that the tip of his tail bleeds. (Pretty charming, I know. Did I mention Harry Potter is looking for a home...) To treat the happy tail he has to wear a cone.

Sometimes he makes this face about it:

But more often than not he just runs through the house at top speed until that poor plastic cone shatters into a million pieces which I spend hours reassembling with packing tape. Also, we tried lining his crate with cardboard since he wags his tail real happy-like inside his crate when we come home.

Said cardboard lasted approximately two days. Finally, we hit on the idea of taping a sock over his tail.

We are happy to report that after a few days of Harry Potter Cotton Tail he is good as new! I am a dog genius.

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Meet Harry Potter

Meet Harry Potter.* He showed up at our house one Tuesday morning.

He was hungry, dirty and as sweet as he could be. We decided he could use a little help so we stuck him in our back yard with some food and water and ran off to work. When I got home that night I tried to bathe away his stinks and we found this:

[This is a picture of his open wound after 2 days of antibiotics and hydrotherapy.]

For the time being he is a part of our family (or our pack and pride, as our pet sitter calls them.)

Soon we will be joining forces with a foster care organization to find a home for him. So if you know anyone who would like a Harry Potter who:

• Is a gentle, loving, and enthusiastic little dog
• Is house trained
• Is learning to sit, stay, and come

we would love to connect you with our adoption agency.**

*Eddy named Harry Potter because we often call Norman "you-know-who."  If you get this reference, you are also a dork.
**Hermoine Granger and Ronald Weasley not included.

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