{"id":985,"date":"2007-11-07T12:20:21","date_gmt":"2007-11-07T17:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/07\/melvin\/"},"modified":"2007-11-07T12:20:21","modified_gmt":"2007-11-07T17:20:21","slug":"melvin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/2007\/11\/07\/melvin\/","title":{"rendered":"Melvin"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have lately been dog-sitting my sister’s dog Melvin for a few days. He’s a Boston Terrier<\/a>, and he has two states, and two only.
\nOne is a lethargic, cuddly, blinky, heat seeking loafer who is constantly on the lookout for a lap to curl up in and sleep.\u00c2\u00a0 The house is at least 5 degrees too cold for Melvin’s preference and so in this state he fastens himself to any other living thing like a leech.\u00c2\u00a0 He draws off heat as easily as breathing, and is all the more delighted when he is completely covered by a blanket.\u00c2\u00a0 When that happens he can finally relax since his internal temperature quickly rises above 100 degrees Celsius.\u00c2\u00a0 You can tell it’s past 100 degrees because he usually starts to snore or grunt around that time, which must just be the steam outgassing from his baked innards.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s a happy Melvin.<\/p>\n

His other state makes him happy also, but he’s probably the only one who is happy at that time.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s best described as a furry, sniffing, tongued, tornado.\u00c2\u00a0 He achieves some kind of critical mass of energy saved while under the blanket and decides to expend it in one shot.\u00c2\u00a0 I guess he has achieved an internal steam boiler pressure so high it’s becoming dangerous to not let it out.\u00c2\u00a0 Usually it’s Harvey that bears the brunt of this attack, but sometimes if anyone is unlucky enough to be lying down, or reclining anywhere in the “Melvin strike zone” of around 15-24 inches from the ground or a bed or couch, they will receive “The Full Melvin”.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a full service cleansing of every orifice that can be reached by a canine tongue, and so you had better duck and cover – and I do mean cover – everything you don’t want serviced.\u00c2\u00a0 You will be left freshly cleansed, and glistening and feeling quite foolish.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for the victims, Steam Powered Melvins come and go quickly.\u00c2\u00a0 They have a snorting ferocity that is fearsome to behold, but quickly fade and must retire under a blanket somewhere to reheat the boiler for another attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have lately been dog-sitting my sister’s dog Melvin for a few days. He’s a Boston Terrier, and he has two states, and two only. One is a lethargic, cuddly, blinky, heat seeking loafer who is constantly on the lookout … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/siGNU-melvin","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vallentyne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}