Bud is a strange dog, unlike any other dog I have had, and I have had some strange dog. He does things I have not seen my other dogs do. For one thing, he moves shoes and slippers all around the house, but we have never seen him do it, not once.

Our friend Kitty came to see Maria in her studio today and she left her boots out in front, they were muddy. When she came out, Bud was marching around the yard with the boot in his mouth, perhaps looking for somewhere to bury it. It was taller than he is, but he didn’t mind.

He is mostly housebroken, except he lifts his leg every day on Red’s food bowl for reasons that are not clear to us, and we have not yet figured out how to get him to stop. (We remove the bowl now, which is one way).

When we put the food bowls down, he runs to Red’s bowl, then Fate’s bowl, then to his bowl, he wants to see what everyone else is getting.

In the crate, he sometimes whines softly, he responds well to the command “please shut up.” It isn’t what Cesar or the New Skete Monks do.

He is very calm around people and with some training, is also calm around the sheep. But he is not yet calm around Lulu, one of our donkeys.

He is feuding with Lulu, barking at her and seemingly taunting her. Twice, she lowered her ears and charged at him, and he got the message and took off.

Now, he gives her (wisely) a wide berth but also barks at her contemptuously as he moves away, almost as if he is cursing at her. Somehow, I think he is. She gives him the stinkeye but leaves him alone.

When I took a brief nap today, he jumped up onto my chair and tried to sleep on my stomach. There wasn’t room, so he jumped down and slept on Red’s stomach. Red didn’t mind.

He loves to navigate in the car, he sits on the front console and looks ahead. He is curious, and often stares at me as if I were some kind of odd species, he is trying to figure me out.