A while back, I did a post about the similarities between Dakota, Kisa and Larkin. Today, we discovered another one. From the time Kisa was a few months old, she loved the butt rub — me straddled over her back facing her rear, fingers massaging all that fur on either side of her tail. Dakota has now taken to presenting me with his hind quarters to take advantage of that same luxury. We’re talking about a six month old puppy standing perfectly still for 20 minutes, head nodding, eyes drooping.

If he would only be that still when being brushed or having his nails clipped.

One of the fun things about getting a new puppy is wondering how different (or similar) he’ll be from your previous pets — because when those similarities or differences start to manifest themselves, we’re most often confronted with fond memories of what it was like when our aging four-leggers were as young as Dakota is now.

Thus far:

• Like Larkin, Dakota can hold it forever but would easily win the prize for the world’s longest pee.
• Like Kisa, Dakota doesn’t bat an eye-lash when he gets a taste of hot, spicy food… I’m talking cuisine that would make half the average population approach with caution. Like Kisa, Dakota is sort of in that “hmm-umm” category, trying to figure out how to get another taste”.
• Like Larkin, Dakota just wants to be next to you and lick you to death.
• Like Kisa, Dakota can’t resist anything made of paper… including the mail and newspapers. His love of toilet paper is unique to him alone.
• Like Larkin, Dakota can’t resist the urge to jump on you when you come into the room (but we’re working on that).
• Like Kisa, Dakota can’t resist an opportunity to hump Larkin. Yeah, I know… Kisa’s a female. And your point is?
• Like Larkin, Dakota can’t resist putting his tongue in Kisa’s ear.
• Like Kisa, Dakota eats so fast he can’t possible taste his food.
• Like Larkin, Dakota likes napping with his back against the front door — especially when it’s really cold and windy. Leonbergers make great draft snakes.
• Like Kisa, Dakota is humanly vocal. Larkin simply barks, albeit rare. Kisa and Dakota converse. They both have a variety of sounds that are much like human conversations, complete with varying inflections and volume.

Life has been a little dull lately. Dad’s been commuting to Boston a lot lately, so he’s leaving the house before 0700 and not getting home until well after 1900. Mom only has to go to the office once a week, but her job has been a really crazy, so she’s on the phone or Skype almost all day.

With both of them so busy, I’ve had to find things to keep myself occupied during the day. I have lots of toys, but a puppy needs new, interesting objects to keep him entertained.

Today, I had a real treat. Mom forgot to put the toilet paper on the high shelf in the bathroom again. And lucky for me, it was a full roll so I was busy shredding for at least a couple of hours.

Look, Mom... textile arts!

Shredding toilet paper is very hard work.

Hah! I hid my squeaky soccer ball upstairs in Mom and Dad’s bedroom. I’m really good at hiding things. Mom knows its up there ’cause she saw me with it, but even she couldn’t find it.

And it doesn’t matter if Dakota sees this ’cause he’s not allowed to go upstairs yet — we’d never get a wink of sleep at night.

So Mom’s always bragging about Kisa ’cause she apparently fetches reliably and everyone knows that Leonbergers don’t fetch. Truth of the matter is that Kisa only fetches her favorite squeaky soccer ball. I couldn’t figure out how come I had all these toys to play with from the minute I got here. Turns out it was all the toys that Kisa wouldn’t play with.

Mom says she bought all sorts of toys trying to get Kisa to play and she wouldn’t have any part of it until Grandma Bell showed up on Christmas with the famous soccer ball. Mom was afraid Kisa would get jealous if she gave me the soccer ball so she waited until I had lived here a while before she brought that one out. Boy, did Kisa perk up. Mom says she hasn’t played with that ball for five years, but she was fetching better than a retriever and as fast as I am, I never got to put a paw on it.

I’ll probably never get another chance because the soccer ball has mysteriously disappeared. I wonder where it went?