Sorry, Perry, I wasn't underestimating you or implying you don't understand meter. Just expatiating on a favorite subject. As you can gather, metrical poets generally compose by ear, not by counting syllables. Metrical science provides after-the-fact diagnostic tools to help figure out why something works, or doesn't.
Pyrrhic substitutions work fine in a couple of contexts. In conjunction with a spondee substitution, they create a dip without shorting the number of stresses. It is also common for a line to end with two unstressed syllables where the final word ends in two unstressed syllables. There is a kind of promotion by syllable count that nonetheless does not result in a stress, e.g., "Not waiting for my death or bankruptcy..."
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