A weenie dog and a Haitian street dog have a baby and....

It looks something like this:

How cute is that?! That is McArthur Jameson at about four weeks old (last weekend).

These are his lame-o parents, Ewan and Bella:

Yeah, they're pretty cute, too...

Ewan is a pure-bred dachshund who was wandering the streets of our old neighborhood for a few weeks before he fell in love w/Bella (who is in fact Stephane's mom's dog, but has lived with us since the earthquake) and moved in w/us. Seriously, he LOVES Bella. As in, sits near her and just stares adoringly, with the occasional wag.

Ewan had tried in vain many times to consummate their love and since Bella has a past history of infanticide by neglect (she is truly the world's worst mother), I had begged to get one or both of them fixed, but Stephane, in Haitian style, kept putting it off. Honestly, I wasn't too worried about Bella getting knocked up b/c, ya know -- look at them! Ewan couldn't reach her if he stood on a stool!

But obviously nature prevailed and five weeks ago we awoke to find a tiny mini-Ewan in our downstairs guestroom closet.

(Actually, we have a hunch that our former maid may have assisted in the mechanics of the mating process. She was the only one who insisted that she had seen them successfully 'get together' and was wholly obsessed w/the idea of a Ewan-Bella byproduct, so....Thanks, Gert.)

The baby was really something of a surprise, as Bella had not looked pregnant at all. It was literally only a day or two before McArthur's arrival that we thought maybe she was acting like a pregnant dog, not that she looked much like one.

McArthur is pretty awesome. He is learning to potty outside already and seems to be developing quite a feisty personality, so smart and sassy -- my favorites! We didn't start calling him by name until last week, just in case he, too, fell victim to Bella's lackadaisical approach to mothering, but it seems he is quite tough, persistent; hence the strong name.

Since he doesn't have any littermates, we are relying on Ewan to help McArthur learn about being a dog. (Bella is predictably no help here, as she is too old to want to play [seriously, she's about 10 -- we're lucky McArthur wasn't born a mongoloid] and doesn't care about his development anyhow.) Ewan, being rather neurotic and desperate for attention himself, is a somewhat ambivalent tutor: On the one hand, he very much enjoys having someone to play with (Bella snubs him, too) and he will roll around w/McArthur until they are both exhausted. On the other hand, McArthur takes up a lot of our attention with his puppy needs and I think sometimes Ewan considers eating him. But I think they'll work it out. The possibility of McArthur will develop into a stable, 'normal' dog seems rather too much to hope for, but I think he's going to be pretty fun, if nothing else.