social responsibility

with all this puppy hubbub, i've really been slacking on the blogging. and cleaning. and exercising (not counting the 12 to 15 miles i'm putting in walking to work & then home on my lunch break to let grover out). not such a great thing with blogher coming up & not getting any writing in at all.
grover is truly the cutest puppy on the planet. (okay, all/most puppies are pretty darn adorable.) when he’s not testing boundaries by biting my feet & hands, that is. he's getting better about that & he’s started puppy kindergarten last week. grover just needs to know what’s appropriate around people vs. puppies. and he’s only 14 weeks old as of yesterday.
one of the things i didn’t take into consideration when purchasing my “teddy bear puppy”, as s was calling him last night, was all the attention he’d draw from strangers. obviously i take him outside on a regular basis, multiple times per day, and any time a person, dog or car comes by, grover is fascinated & wants to meet them. considering my self-imposed hermit status, this is not really conducive to avoidance of all living things. either the puppy inserts himself in the stranger’s path (99.9% of the time) or the person spots grover & bombards me with questions and requests to pet the cutest puppy ever. my first response is to swoop in and pick grover up, while making a run for my apartment. i still succumb to this impulse on a number of occasions, particularly when he tugs on the leash to jump on someone or another dog. again, it’s all a learning experience: grover is learning & so are s & i as he’s our first pet.
i guess being more socially available and open to meeting new people isn’t such a bad thing. besides having even less time to do anything. including blogging. perhaps I should look at it as practice for blogher next month. although i still think i'll spend most of my time hiding in corners being a wallflower.