After my previous post about new dog names, Paul commented with:

Um, what happened to Basil?

Which is a question I’ve avoided here and on Twitter.  So I guess it’s time to give you the straight answer.

Dan and I brought Bazil the dog home on the Sunday before Memorial Day of this year.  He was a spunky chihuahua/pug.  He was about the same age as Olive, and he wasn’t fixed.

We had a couple of problems with him trying to mount Olive…but for the most part, they got along.

On the Tuesday after Memorial Day Daniel took Bazil to the Maricopa County Animal Control Facility (the pound) and had Bazil neutered. Tuesday night Bazil came home and seemed to be recovering properly.  Wednesday was a tough day…you could tell that Bazil was in some pain.  The pound didn’t give us any pain meds for him.

Thursday I came home from work during my lunch break, like usual, to check on the doggies and to take Bazil outside.  Bazil wasn’t as crate trained as Olive was, and we wanted to avoid accidents in the house.

When I left the house to go back to work, everything was fine.

Thursday after work I had planned on going to my mom’s house, and when I left the club I got a text from Daniel asking me to call him as soon as I got the chance because he had “sad news.”

When Daniel got home Bazil was really lethargic and didn’t jump up to greet him like he normally did.  Daniel figured out that something was seriously wrong with Bazil, so he ended up taking him to the emergency vet.

At the vet they told Daniel that it would be best to euthanize Bazil.  And we wouldn’t officially know what caused this unless we paid for an expensive puppy autopsy.  If they had to guess, the vet people told us, it could have been a bad reaction to the anesthesia or a blood clot from the surgery.  We’ll never really know.

The 2 dogs get along, for the most part.  They are still working out some of the who-will-be-the-dominant-dog drama.  But Olive is large and in charge.

As I’m writing this, Bazil is in getting his balls removed.  So hopefully he’ll give up on trying to hump Olive.  She was getting a little pissed that he kept mounting her yesterday.

And we’ve done some reading, we’ve realized that we aren’t supposed to give a bunch of attention to the submissive dog (in our case Bazil) after Olive has give him an old-fashioned butt-kicking.  We’re supposed to reinforce the pack order and give Olive a treat or pet her.  Our natural instinct was to console Bazil.

And walking 2 dogs is an entirely different story!

We are crazy.  Absolutely nutso.  

Today Mr. D and I went and met a really cute Pug/Chihuahua (a Chug?!).  The owner was overwhelmed with dealing with a dog and a baby…so we decided that Olive would love a playmate.

We named him Bazil.

He’s a couple of months younger than Olive.  They’ve been chasing and playing with one another since we’ve been home.

The only worries we have about Bazil are that he’s still got his little balls (we’re going to get him fixed on Tuesday) and he keeps trying to mount Olive; and we worry that he doesn’t know how to tell us when he has to go potty.

I hope we don’t turn into crazy dog people.  When were leaving the ASPCA today, I told Daniel that 2 dogs is enough for us.  And he said, “Yeah…until we get a bigger house, 2 dogs will do.”

Honestly, 2 dogs will always be enough.