BRUTUS

He's 5 1/2 years old and he's been with us since December 17, 1999. We adopted him from the Golden Valley Humane Society after going there to see if we wanted a St. Bernard our friends told us was there. Harry (the St. Bernard) turned out to be just too: big, restless, slobbery, jumpy..., so we took a look at some other dogs. Brutus was the second dog we visited. He seemed to be more interested in the other dogs, and we took this to be a pretty good sign. He didn't jump up and he didn't do a lot of barking and we thought these were a few more good signs. He was (and is) a very good dog. The incident that made me think this was the dog for us was when we had him out in the "walking" area he walked up to the flip-up lock on the gate, flipped it up with his nose, and nearly got away. Obviously, this was a smart dog, too. We took him home that evening.

He's a dog, which means he'll try to eat anything but his food. He's gotten sick because of this a couple of times, so walking him takes some vigilance to make sure something doesn't just happen into his mouth and down his throat. I've fished out sandwiches, rotting fish, bacon and many other things out of his mouth that made me wish I had some running water and dish soap around to sterilize my hands afterwards.

He likes his tennis ball and his squeaky ball, but his rubber chicken is his all-time favorite toy. We found this out when we took him to an off-lead dog run (every Saturday) and someone else had brought this toy for their dog. Brutus chased it around and clearly was enjoying this other dog's toy. We gave it back to the owner, and went out to the pet store to get Brutus his own rubber chicken. We spoil him rotten.

He's a good boy, but he really doesn't like the camera much. He's getting more used to it, though.

He knows a few commands. He's good at the basics and really isn't a problem when he's off-lead. We've also taught him to howl. I don't think we "taught" him to howl, but we howl about once a night and he really seems to get a kick out of it.

Click HERE to hear Brutus (and us) howl! Caution: It's about a megabyte large and it's not exactly hi-fi. It's about 40 seconds long or so.

He's one of my favorite photograpy subjects. At first he was a bit camera-shy, but he doesn't seem to mind much anymore. He doesn't like the flash, so the best shots of him either come without a flash, or with a camera that doesn't look like a camera.

Click this line to see some more pictures of Brutus.