This is my dog, Bolt!

I haven't featured the furriest member of our family yet: our dog, Dioji (although most of this post is really about Emily and how she plays with him). He has a funny name, or at least one that looks funny in print. His name is the word "dog" spelled out, so it sounds like Dee-oh-gee. Emmy has had a bit of a hard time with that, and she mostly calls him "Yoshi" or "Buddy" (which she gets from me, since I call him that sometimes). Sometimes she shortens "Yoshi" to "Yoj." I'm not really sure what nationality our dog is but it sounds pretty exotic.

Lately Emily has started calling Dioji "Bolt." She LOVES the Disney film, so she has decided to become Penny and our dog, therefore, becomes Bolt. She gets him to play Bolt by tempting him with one of his toys. Basically she either dangles it in his face or bops him with it until he grabs it. Once he's got it, she starts running around the house with him in tow. Our dog cannot be accused of being smart, so if you're thinking, "Why doesn't he just let go?" the answer is: because he is too dumb to think of that. So off he goes! All the while, Emily is yelling things like, "Come on, Bolt!" and "Let's go, Bolt!" When she sees me, she says, "Mommy, this is my dog, Bolt."

We assigned Emily the chore of feeding the dog, which we felt was an age-appropriate chore and also one to teach some responsibility. Well, more often than not, when I tell her to feed the dog, she runs into the room where his food and dish are, yelling, "Come on, Bolt!" Once she gets him in there, she says to him, "Are you hungry, boy? Here you go, Bolt." And then she gives him his food, one pellet at a time into his bowl (until I tell her to just dump it in there already!!). The poor dog. He's probably like, "I don't know who Bolt is but I'll eat his food if that kid would just put it in the dish already!" HAH!

As for Bailey, she just calls him "dog" which is actually a pretty close approximation of his name! She loves him and she especially loves watching him run around with her big sister.