On Tuesday, I dedicated a post to my hubby-of-two-years, and I think the other love in my life, Sully, got a wee bit jealous, because he went and dug a giant hole in the backyard. Hubs tried to deter him from digging more by filling in the hole and putting a couple bricks on top of it. Sully took this as a challenge to bury the bricks, obviously, so now we have a crazy dirt pile surrounded by holes and buried bricks. He clip-clopped into the house with dirt on his nose and paws and looked at me as if to say: “Where the heck’s my post, mom?“
So here he is, my little Sully-bear:
From the very beginning of our relationship, Jared and I talked about having a dog one day. Growing up, we’d each begged our parents for puppies, but never got them (they had some lame excuse about dogs being a lot of responsibility or something…).
In 2008, Jared and I moved in together, got engaged, and ran off to the animal shelter to get ourselves some responsibility, I mean, a cute little, teeny-tiny apartment-sized pup. And an hour later we were on our way home with a seventy pound bloodhound whose turds are the size of those teeny weeny doggies.
All of the dogs in the shelter were given temporary names after celebrities and our boy was dubbed “Burt Reynolds.” After a mile-long list of new name ideas, we settled on Sully, after the big, blue monster from our favorite Pixar film, Monsters, Inc. Tell me you’ve seen it!
Just like the Sully from the movie, our boy can be intimidating. He has a very loud, hound dog howl, weighs 90 pounds, and can jump over the 6-foot brick wall surrounding our back patio. In reality, he’s extremely fearful of everything, from other people to his own shadow. Beyond the fear, he’s a bouncy, rambunctious, clumsy, Tasmanian-devil-dog, that quickly tires out into a mellow, dopey, snuggly pile of love.
Speaking of love, the guy is obsessed with cheese, tuna fish, edamame, licking out empty Chobani cups, string cheese, chips, Fritos, and especially, peanut butter… not that we ever feed him human food…
He’s also fairly obsessed with tennis balls and we can’t leave him alone with them because he’ll eat them. Literally. Have you ever seen a dog poop a tennis ball?
16 hours a day, Sully sleeps in weird positions all over the house. We tried to crate him in the beginning, but that barely lasted a week as he Houdini-ed his way out of the crate while we were at work. We came home to find him snoozing on the couch and the couches have been his ever since.
We have no idea how old the sniffly, howling bugger is, but since we got him the day after Christmas, 12/26/2008, we’ve deemed that to be his “birthday.” Last year, he got a bath mat for his birthday (and a rainbow bandana from mamaw).
Although we have a giant dog bed and fuzzy bathmats throughout the house, he definitely prefers the couches and human beds, pillows, blankets… It’s Sully’s World and we’re just living in it.
At any time, on any given day, you can find these two spooning. (We won’t talk about the onesie pajamas…)
We may have to tell him to “sit” several times before he finally understands, but dumb or not, he’s got the biggest heart and the sweetest soul. I mean, c’mon, look at that face!
And then there’s the head tilt that always, always makes me smile…
He may be a loud, sloppy, stinkball, but we love our big sweetie-petey, because he’s made us into a family.
Now quit digging up the yard, k?
sullyyyyyyyy……I loved reading this.