a new member of the club

meet claire. she is a dachshund that i adopted from the humane society yesterday. i wasn't really even looking to get a dog and the breed really entered my consciousness only this past thursday (long story), but we really had a "moment". she is very calm, affectionate and obedient. in addition, she is so submissive that to greet you, she walks up to you and rolls over. she has perma-wrinkles on her chubby ankles/wrists, which are really what won me over.

there is one problem. she is ten pounds overweight. that doesn't seem like a lot, i realize, but she's 29 pounds so that's roughly 1/3 of her body weight. she is still pretty agile for a dog that would be considered morbidly obese but does have some trouble with some of the more complex body maneuvers. when she rolls over, she rolls the front half first and then the back half plops over like a really slow sling shot after a little while. she also has trouble keeping balance sometimes when she's trying to reach around to scratch an itch above the base of her tail. her (giant) butt jiggles when she walks.

so we're going to have our own biggest loser (blake said he would be "bob" the trainer and i would be "gillian") and see if we can't get this little lump of sugar to take some weight off. i'm going to try and get her down to 20-22lbs. until then, i will be calling her "eclair", which is, roughly what her body looks like right now. this afternoon, she told me that she didn't know if she was fat because she was sad or sad because she was fat. it broke my heart.

and in case you are wondering, i am still planning on getting a dane, i thought claire and paul could be friends.