Jenn Martinelli Blogging in Boston

So I have been meaning to post more stories about Billy and Cleo.

Billy, as many of you know, is a grumpy old dalmation with all sorts of issues. Cleo is a much younger hound dog mix with her own sort of issues, not least of which is if you let her she will trick you into feeding her about 8 dinners.

They generally get along well, ignoring each other, or even hanging out together and snuggled up nicely like in this photo.

However, sometimes not so much. Billy has particularly grumpy times and Cleo has particularly hyper times. There are sensitive issues like food and personal space which cause problems. Billy growls and snaps to put Cleo in her place, or so he thinks, but he often unfortunately catches her giant hound dog ears, which results in much freaking out from Cleo and enough blood to look like a murder scene to a casual observer. This is followed by a round of crazy howling from Cleo, and she also tends to want to howl at him every time she sees him for about the next 8 hours. Kind of funny. More funny when she's not bleeding.

In any case, we had a particularly funny instance of this the other night, at least I thought so. We came home from the grocery store and the dogs were all worked up because they know that FOOD comes from the grocery store. Also, they're excited we're home, and additionally, Cleo is trying to trick everybody into feeding her a second dinner.

In all the excitement of jumping over grocery bags on the floor and trying to check them out, Billy randomly slipped on the hardwood floor and fell. Cleo was close by so he decided it would be a good time to snarl and snap at her, since he was having a bad moment. He didn't really catch her at all, or at least he didn't break the skin, but this set off a crazy howling episode from Cleo and nothing we could do would silence her. Heather and I were falling all over the floor trying to control her, hold her mouth shut, calm her down... but she was having none of it. I really wish we had it on tape because it's probably one of the funniest looking scenes to see played out. Meanwhile, Billy hangs his head because he knows he was bad and just kind of mopes around. And Cleo tries to get in his face for the rest of the night to remind him that he shouldn't bite her by howling deafeningly half an inch from his nose.

Fun times on Beacon Hill at chez BadBoy Family.