Name: Bruno

Aliases: Bru, Bru-ski, Muttley, Fluffydog, Fat-Dog, Bonehead

Age: Six months

Occupation: Complete Nut

On Saturday, Bruno reached his half-birthday. People ask all the time how things are going with the puppy. I tell them, imagine your son hit puberty during the terrible twos.

Gone almost overnight are the tiny puppy teeth. We found some of his tiny incisors, and I snatched out three hanging molars myself, but those needle-like puppy canines simply disappeared. His adult canines are lengthening daily. They look worse, but feel better.

He no longer snaps or chews on us, but he approaches everything and everyone he loves with jaws agape. He wants to mouth you. He also wants to rub his head and body against your legs like a cat, to push himself between them as you stand or beneath them as you sit. (He took little Lily for a ride the other day by standing up while she was carefully stepping over him.)

If you are lying down, his first move is to stick his cold wet nose in your ear, and if you’ve only just gotten up and are wearing your pajama shorts, he likes to run that same nose from the back of your calf to the back of your knee, leaving a cold wet snail-trail to help bring your morning into focus.

As a young friend of ours says, he “got his puberty.” He is rapidly approaching fifty pounds, and beneath the dark puppy fur on his head, ears, shoulders and neck, he is rapidly turning tan. And he stinks. Again almost overnight, he went from a sweet-smelling puppy to a rank jock of a dog; we’re bathing him weekly to keep up (or rather, to keep the smell down).

Wanderlust has also kicked in, so we keep him tethered outside and are beginning to work specifically on coming when called.

It was bitterly cold for awhile, then quite icy, making the walking of a forty-plus-pound, high-energy puppy treacherous. Thankfully for the past few weeks Bruno has seemed content to play and sleep in the house, all the while gaining size (and storing energy, apparently). Yesterday I took him for a walk, and was struck by how much stronger, more energetic, and more fearless he is. He strained forward with his body and his attention; he needed constant reminders not to pull, and shot this way and that to investigate chunks of snow, icy patches, debris, and other dogs. A Pomeranian elicited insistent whining, two separate retrievers sparked whining and great leaps up into the air, and the pair of enormous, booming Great Danes up the street (which Bruno refused to walk past as a pup, and had to be carried), garnered leaps, barks, and playful growls and snarls.

He jumped around, spun circles, scrambled and skittered on the ice, snapped at his lead, and was generally nutty. He paid acute attention to the neighbor’s horse (his giiiiiirlfriend…) and to a pickup hauling a bouncing and rattling aluminum trailer (which caused him to jump back, scoot sideways, and stare). Then, when we returned home, he tore around the house, a rubber mallard in his jaws, tossing it violently, shaking it viciously, and generally showing himself to be an adolescent terrier.

He still tries to sit in my lap. He still has one corkscrew ear that springs sideways from his head. We joke that this ear is attuned to the voices in his head while the other is listening to us. Which one wins the moment is a crap shoot.

He’s a good puppy, on his way to becoming a good dog. Good boy, Bruno.