Louie The Enforcer

This is Louie's self-appointed place in life.

This is why he got broken. He is attached to my feet. It makes for a tripping hazard.

Louie loves when I feed the puppies. He gets to lay on my feet as I sit on the floor for a half hour, every 3 hours round the clock.

I have the puppy crate in a corner of the kitchen, and sit so that I make a triangle with the door of the crate. This is to block Margo and Jill from invading Darla's space. New moms are all sorts of nervous, no matter the species. You can look at ma bebe, but no touch! Dogs, however, aren't even keen on other dogs looking. They're stingy with the babies until a few weeks have passed and then they're all, "you want to clean up after the babies? Be my guest."

So I make a triangle in the door and keep a puppy in the open space I created, with my back turned to the other girls, telling them that they need to keep their distance. Louie sleeps on my feet. He is interested in the puppies, but in a guy kind of way. "Well look at that. It's kind of cute, isn't it? I'll just take a nap now."

Louie is more intuitive than the average man, though. He picked up in a hurry that I don't want the girls near the puppies. He may look asleep there on my feet, but he's hyper vigilant. If Jill or Margo get a bit closer than he thinks they should, he runs interference. First he gives the stink eye.

If that doesn't work, he'll jump between me and the offending dog. If they ignore him, which they generally do because he's a baby and they're adults, he'll fend them off like a corgi herding cattle. He even opens his mouth, which is hilarious because the french people are far from mean. He won't growl. He won't bite. He just opens his mouth and points it toward his victim. I laugh every time, and he's dead serious. And when the girl backs off (after I've told them to, not because Louie is successful at his job) he'll quietly lay down on my feet again.

This evening, I had just finished feeding the puppies. I wiped down the crate floor and filled Darla's food dish again. I went to close the crate door and Margo decided that she wanted a closer look at the babies. She tried putting her head in the door, but since I was closing it, her stub of a nose got stuck. I looked down to see what was keeping the door from closing, and witnessed that vigilante Louie jumping up to slam the door closed with both his front feet. (I'm not making this up.) I think he took great pleasure in tapping Margo's nose as it closed on her.

Louie is certainly a mama's boy, and he's taking his job seriously. If that's what mama wants, he makes sure the other dogs listen, too.