dalmatian.

Anna Westhoff Each week, Ben Westhoff shares the ups and downs of owning Pippi, the dalmatian mix he and his wife Anna adopted as a puppy in late 2009. Can you believe it? "The Doggie Diaries" is a year old. This column kicked off last October, just a couple of weeks before Anna and I got married. Back then we lived in a tiny apartment in Hoboken, and Anna wanted a dog with all her heart. I was on board with the plan, though a bit nervous that it would chew up our possessions, poop all over the place, and require a lot of walking. Most of that came to pass. But guess what? These days I count myself as a dog lover, and if Anna is to be believed, Pippi has taken quite a shine to me. (She's ...

Anna Westhoff Each week, Ben Westhoff shares the ups and downs of owning Pippi, the dalmatian mix he and his wife Anna adopted as a puppy in late 2009. Anna wrote this week's column. They say no man can serve two masters. That may be true for dogs too. You see, Pippi loves Ben more than me. Even though I faithfully conduct her early-morning walk, feed her twice a day and engage her constantly after I come home from work, it is clear that Ben is Pippi's first master, and I am running a distant second. I can't blame her. The truth is, Ben's a sweetheart of a man and takes excellent care of all his girls, including Pippi. He works at his computer all day with Pippi by his side -- either at ...

Ben Westhoff Each week, Ben Westhoff shares the ups and downs of owning Pippi, the dalmatian mix he and his wife Anna adopted as a puppy in late 2009. Anna wrote this week's column. We've previously alluded to the difficulties in performing routine grooming and health maintenance on our precious pooch, Pippi. Another thing she loathes is having her nails clipped. While I'm all about the mani-pedi, she wriggles and struggles, sometimes aggressively. Usually, she absolutely refuses to let me hold her paws and get into position to carefully clip them with our little black dog-nail trimmer. Our first, unfortunate trip to the vet didn't go much better, with Pippi panicking during the ...

Anna Westhoff Each week, Ben Westhoff shares the ups and downs of owning Pippi, the dalmatian mix he and his wife Anna adopted as a puppy in late 2009, and the first dog Ben's ever had. Pippi needs a ton of exercise. At barely more than a year old, she's still a puppy, and a dalmatian puppy at that. When my "little brother" Jorell was here, he was good about giving Pippi some extra running-around time every day. Now that he's gone, she tends to get more rambunctious, particularly in the evening when Anna and I are both home. Pippi regularly needs new forms of stimulation. We used to take her into our neighbor's fenced-in backyard to run around, but one day she seemed to tire of it for ...

Each week, Ben Westhoff shares the ups and downs of owning Pippi, the dalmatian mix he and his wife Anna adopted as a puppy in late 2009, and the first dog Ben's ever had. Anna wrote this week's column. Last week, on Pippi's first birthday, we basked in the glory of her many strides forward. Today, we're focusing on her few steps back. Our beloved pooch had herself one doozy of a weekend. On Sunday, she managed to unzip and un-stuff her doggy bed. Again. But unlike the three or four times she'd done this before, this time she piled the remains in the middle of the kitchen and peed on them for good measure. The poor bed -- which I bought just six months ago because it matched her cute ...

Anna Westhoff Each week, Ben Westhoff shares the ups and downs of owning Pippi, the 11-month-old Dalmatian mix he and his wife Anna adopted in late 2009, and the first dog Ben's ever had. Anna wrote this week's column. After we revealed the results of Pippi's DNA test a few weeks back, a lot of you wrote in saying that many of these doggie DNA tests are bogus, based on your own first-hand experiences with them. So when a company called Wisdom Panel Insights offered to test Pippi again, we jumped at the chance to compare the results, learn more about our little Pippi Longstocking, and gauge the trustworthiness of the tests themselves. The first test said Pippi's primary breed was ...