Assault

So, this little dog who has found his way into our lives has this funny little habit of jumping right at/onto you with little to no regard for the fact that a supersonic 13 lbs can hit you in the gut with the same impact of a hard thrown bowling ball.

it's kind of hilarious, and kind of awful all at the same time.

I mentioned he is part Jack Russell terrier, right? Well, if you don't know anything about that breed they are tiny little muscle machines. They are ratters, so they are built to low crawl underground at high speeds to catch what they are going after. This means they have legs that are compact, but highly muscled. This makes them good jumpers. Too good a lot of the time.

So, considering our pretty tiny living room, when Odie feels the need to join you on the couch (a trick he came with and we have absolutely no hope of breaking) and wants to do it quickly, he just jumps straight for you. We also have couches on opposing walls, so he will be on one, hit the ground and jump for yours in one fluid motion that can be hard to track with the human eye. This almost always results in a small, but highly charged, dog landing directly in the softest part of the human body- the stomach.

Sometimes you see it coming and can prepare by either tensing the muscles, and creating some sort of impact control, or by doing a weird kind of catch thing with your hands that slows him down just enough. It sorta looks like you're 8 and in your first game of dodgeball it terms of hand position and facial expression, but sometimes it works.

Occasionally, his aim is off and he lands what we call a "junk punch". This is where his teeny tiny little paws land in what I'll chose to call the 'bathing suit area', and is immediately followed by a loud grunt from the chosen human landing pad. There have been countless times in our house over the past few weeks where this noise will be heard from another part of the house by someone safe from the landing and proclaimed "Junk punch!" with alarming accuracy.

Now, this trait can be charming at times. These leaps of faith happen just about every morning with me. I come out from bed and turn on the news, ready to watch for a little while to let my brain get going for the day. Still in pajamas, and always headed straight for the couch and a blanket, it is my morning routine. Odie has wormed his way into this routine by waiting for me to get the blanket pulled up and ready for snuggling, then he dives in under the blanket, and on my lap. This happens in the amount of time it takes to pull a blanket over yourself. It's literally a blur most of the time, but he settles in nicely and there we stay until I get up for breakfast.

This routine has become so familiar to the little jumping bean that even at different points of the day, if I hold up the blanket, he will do his famous 2 couch leap to get under it. Now if I could only get him to do it without making me feel like I've been punched every time, we'd be making progress.