No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation. (F Lebowitz)

It's been a while since I've posted pictures of Millie, so I think I can safely talk about my baby today. I try to control how often I talk about her, for fear of revealing how totally ridiculous I've become about the little terror.

And make no doubt about it, she is a little terror. A completely spoiled 6-pound princess of a terrior, to be precise. Whatever Miss Mildred Rose wants, she ends up getting -- either by begging for it, whining until we give in, or by outright stealing it. And because she is so cute, she gets away with all three!

It is totally impossible to be in the kitchen unless you're willing to give Millie something, anything, to eat. She starts out by begging: she'll sit next to your chair, looking up at you with big, pitiful, "I'm so hungry, pleeaasse!" eyes. I swear she even manages to squeeze out a realistic tear. If by some super-human means you manage to ignore her, she'll start jumping up to catch your attention. As soon as you look toward her, she'll turn the sad eyes back on you.

The second phase, should the begging not work, is to try to trick you into giving her something. She'll run and get her toys, one by one, and drop them at your feet. The idea is that you'll start to play with her, and give her a treat as a reward for one of the tricks she's learned. If your attention wanders and you forget to give the reward, a sharp bark will draw your attention back to it.

Finally, if these first two methods fail (like, if you're a mean, horrible mommy who's too busy reading and eating chocolate birthday cake to pay attention to your sweet, lovable, hungry baby), then Millie will resort to the final stage. She curls up in George's crate (since it's bigger and has a thicker pillow--she's not about to chance being uncomfortable, after all), and whines pitifully until one of the children, being either more sympathetic or gullible than mommy, comes into the kitchen and gives her a treat. You have to be careful to lock the crate door, though, if you decide to give George a similar treat or Millie will steal it right out of his mouth. (Then she growlingly guards BOTH treats from George.)

And I won't even get into a discussion about how a tiny 6-pound puppy can manage to take up an entire queen-size bed...