Set your Cute-MeterTM to "aaawwwwww". I have a new family member to introduce:
Welcome to our new pup, whom we brought home today. She is 9 weeks old, part border collie and part lab. She is incredibly cute, frisky, and smells bad. We hope at least one of these will change.
She had to go through the interrogation process with Bad Dog:
Things went well. Since we now have two of these little beasts, on the rare occasion when a dog plays a role in this blog I can no longer call the old one Bad Dog. So I have decided to call them Canis Major and Canis Minor. If you don’t get that, then here you go (as well as here for completeness). I don’t generally talk about pets on the blog (though it’s been known to happen) but just in case I do, you’ll know whom I’m talking about.
August 12th, 2006 at 3:43 pm
Canis Major and Canis Minor?!?
Surely you’re not sirius!
(Astronomy Puns: Now with Extra Cringing)
August 12th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Damon, you gotta try out for the Randi prize! You just channeled Seth Shostak! Which is amazing, because he isn’t dead!
The million is surely yours!
August 12th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
I don’t want to sound offensive, but if the new puppy is she, why not call her Bad Bitch??? OK, OK, maybe that’s not a bright idea at all, compared to Canes…
However, puppy sure look cute
Good to hear she has good relations with the Bad Dog as well 
August 12th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
You could’ve named the new one “Puppis”.
August 12th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
That picture is clearly a hoax: the shadows are all going in different directions. I don’t believe that you have a new puppy.
August 12th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
Awww.
August 12th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
Cute pups, both of them. What do you call the cat? Leo? (I know an astronomer whose cats are named Regulus and Denebola.)
August 12th, 2006 at 7:08 pm
Damon, you deserve to be shot for that pun.
BA, of course we get Canis major/minor pun. Who do think reads your page?
August 12th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
I’m with you Carniflex, I think “Bad Bitch’ is the way to go.
But BA would have to make it VERY CLEAR to Mrs. Bad Astronomer that he’s talkin’ about the dog, wouldn’t he?
LOL!
August 12th, 2006 at 7:16 pm
SHE IS SO CUTE!! Canis Major and Canis Minor?! That’s cute too, but the joke everyone gets!
Have you considered this dog to be a spy for that “pseudoscientist”??? Could this DOG be living proof of life on Mars?!? I mean, look at that coat and the little cutness!
August 12th, 2006 at 7:28 pm
XD lmfao! I’m with BB on this one. Hoax picture guys, you’ve been tricked again!
August 13th, 2006 at 3:31 am
Mark, the trouble with Puppis is: it’s the poop deck of the ship. So, I guess you associate the puppy with poop…
BA, I’d stick to Canis major & minor if I were you. I think that’s perfectly good (unless Canis minor were to grow up bigger than Canis major of course). I have a stuffed lion (not real, I hasten to add) I call Felis (from Felis leo, you know?), so why shouldn’t you name your canines Canis?
But, BA, you ended a sentence with a preposition (“…whom I’m talking about”). You’d better hope Gillianren doesn’t read this one, or you’ll be in deep trouble…:-)
For those of you who don’t know, look here:
http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=45420
August 13th, 2006 at 6:09 am
Apostrophe Avenger, here. BA, you dangle as many prepositions as you wish. (Go ahead and split your infinitives, too.) The alleged ‘rule’ against dangling prepositions was invented in the 18th century by early grammarians who had an imperfect understanding of the nature of language in general and English in particular, and the ‘rule’ never really took hold in terms of how the language was used. Prestigious writers had been dangling prepositions before the rule was formulated; they continued to dangle them afterward. As Winston Churchill is supposed to have famously written as a rebuke to an editor who marked one of his dangling prepositions for destruction: “This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.†(The Churchill anecdote is widespread but may be apocryphal. However, it nicely makes the point of how awkwardly we would write if we never dangled our prepositions.) Farewell. I will now return to my hunt for abused apostrophes. An abused apostrophe is something I will not put up with.
August 13th, 2006 at 6:45 am
Off-topic: “Enslave the humans and steal all their cows. All of them!” Courtesy Sinfest.
August 13th, 2006 at 6:58 am
You have just effed up the Balance of the World with too much cute.
Hence, I have to do this. Sorry.
Bad words deleted by The Bad Astronomer
There. Back in balance.
Yours in letters,
Erin O’Brien
From The BA: Sorry Erin, as much as I like you and your writing, this website tries to be marginally (at worst) kid-friendly. I get hits from EDU sites as kids look up astronomy-related info, so I want to keep “bad” words off the site.
August 13th, 2006 at 7:09 am
Nigel Depledge Says:
“Mark, the trouble with Puppis is: it’s the poop deck of the ship. So, I guess you associate the puppy with poop…”
As a matter of fact. I do identify dogs (and cats) with poop. I have two German shepherds and five cats, so if there’s one thing I know, it’s poop!
Anyway, the joke was funnier my way.
August 13th, 2006 at 8:05 am
“I know an astronomer whose cats are named Regulus and Denebola.”
My brother had a cat that was the only full-tailed cat in a litter of Manxes. So, of course, his name was Denebola.
August 13th, 2006 at 9:12 am
I can see the Border Collie part, but I’m darned (sorry for the language, – shame…) if I can see any Lab. Unless you are referring to being produced in one. Test tube style. And who am I to complain, as my latest grand daughter was exactly that, and she is the cutest little girl I know.
Ivan.
August 13th, 2006 at 9:19 am
Oh, I just remembered, we used to have a budgerigar, and it answered to the name of “Tadpole”. Figure that one out.
Ivan.
August 13th, 2006 at 10:04 am
I suppose if your dogs are Canis Major and Canis Minor that makes you Orion. In the spirit of Lloyd Bentson vs. Dan Quayle, you’re no Orion! It would be more interesting if you got a Capricornus, I’ve never seen a sea goat before though I suspect it also would smell.
August 13th, 2006 at 10:37 am
I should point out these are not the dogs’ real names. They are pseudonyms to protect their privacy.
August 13th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
They are participants in the CPP: Canine Protection Program.
August 13th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
If they were my dogs they would be named Turbo and Sparky.
August 13th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
As the mythology say’s that Canis Major and Minor are Orions dogs. I guess that makes you …, Oh never mind.
August 14th, 2006 at 12:48 am
How iOrionic!
Ivan.
August 14th, 2006 at 8:36 am
All right. Okay. I admit it. You kids do not want to try this at home. I did and look what happened to me. I grew up to be a foul-mouthed mild-mannered housewife that goes on and gets put on probation her very first time here at Bad Astronomy.
(yes, I spent an inordinate amount of time in the principal’s office as a kid)
I’d like to tell you that I’ve Found Jesus and am pouting in the corner with my tail between my legs (note use of appropriate cliche for “Dog Blog”), but, sadly, that is not the case. I am eating candy bars and, well, finding ways to swear about it. Don’t believe me? Come on over to my place.
I don’t know anything about Astronomy anyway, except for knowing when to hold out for a shooting star and that magic dust really works.
I am Erin.
August 14th, 2006 at 9:00 am
Wasn’t there a song that went something like “I am Erin, hear me swear… ”
oh, wait…
I’m so confused.
BA:
cute doggie. The smell thing can be fixed with a good bath, you better hope!
Or are you shopping around for Doggie Beano?
August 14th, 2006 at 9:02 am
I’m not an astronomer, just a science and science fiction junkie. 12 years ago I named my cats Phobos and Deimos.
August 19th, 2006 at 7:02 am
Apostrophe Avenger said:
“This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.†(The Churchill anecdote is widespread but may be apocryphal. However, it nicely makes the point of how awkwardly we would write if we never dangled our prepositions.) ”
Unfortunately, it does not serve as a very good illustration. I believe the story to be apocryphal, because Winnie was a very smart cookie. In “up with which I will not put”, the word “up” is not functioning as a preposition, but as a modifying auxiliary to the verb. So, the verb “to put up (with)” has a different meaning from the verb “to put”.
So, the form “with which I will not put up” is quite acceptable without any dangling prepositions.
Dangling prepositions are ugly and they jar on the senses. I find the alternatives significantly more elegant.