TheBanyanTree: Another Dog Story

[Sachet]

  Delightful dog antics to picture, Neekia. :-) A mirror image of my 
house with the dog toys. For some reason she doesn't like it when I put 
them in a neat pile. The strewn freely around look is evidently more 
pleasing to the canine toy connoisseurs of the world. <g>

On 4/8/2012 9:10 PM, Monique Colver wrote:
> If you don’t like dog stories, best to stop reading now. Occasionally
> someone will say to me, “Not another dog story! Can’t you write something
> else?” To which I reply, “Well, yes, I can, but maybe I don’t want to.”
>
>
>                  The other night Ash and Honey and I were hanging out
> together. Charming husband was in Seattle, and so it was up to me to
> entertain the dogs in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed. Honey
> is no problem, now that she’s elderly and not overly ambitious. Ash,
> however, is still a demon on four paws when he wants to be.
>
>
>                  Which is often, but then he wants to lay his head in my lap
> and go to sleep, and he’s so sweet I can’t be annoyed at him. Well, I CAN,
> but then I get over it.
>
>
>                  I was, after a particularly hard day in the office,
> attempting to rest my oh-so-annoying legs. It wasn’t that I had a hard day
> at the office, it was that after sitting for hours my legs hurt. A lot. And
> the rest of me too. Apparently sitting at a desk is one of the top causes
> of death, and so I was well on my way to death when I quit work for the
> day. I had my feet up, which helps reduce 1) the swelling, and 2) the pain,
> and Ash was wandering around looking for something to do.
>
>
>                  He’s often looking for something to do. Earlier in the day
> he taught himself a new trick. Instead of dumping over the kitchen trash to
> get at what was inside (all, according to him, perfectly good edible
> stuff), he would open the lid, take an item out, play with it until it was
> of no interest, then get another item out. He especially likes the single
> serving pie containers from my recent pie infatuation. The advantage to
> this innovation is that I couldn’t hear him – when he’d knock over the
> trash, I could come running from upstairs and put it upright. But now . . .
> he took out quite a few containers and trash and spread them around the
> living room before I caught on. Two days later I’m still finding
> licked-clean pie containers in random corners.
>
>
>                  But this night he was focused on his toys. There’s a former
> magazine thingie that now holds everything he owns, and he proceeded to
> remove items one at a time. First all the synthetic bones. He’d take one
> out, chew on it for a few minutes, then go for another one. Soon the living
> room looked like a dinosaur graveyard, if dinosaurs have a only straight
> hollow bones. I don’t think they do, but how would I know?
>
>
>                  Then he looked at me, put his head back down into the
> former magazine basket, then looked back at me. He pulled something out,
> tossed it aside, then looked at me again.
>
>
>                  When I didn’t quite catch on to his obtuse message he let
> out a little whine, just enough to get my attention.
>
>
>                  I asked what he wanted, and he whined again, stuck his head
> in the magazine basket, then looked at me again.
>
>
>                  I eventually realized, using my superior detective skills,
> so I went over to see what he wanted.
>
>
>                  I took out a stuffed kangaroo. “This what you want?”
>
>
>                  He just looked at me, as if to say, “What the hell? What do
> I want that for?”
>
>
>                  I took out a stuffed duck, an elephant, a pig, a hedgehog,
> a rabbit .  . . still the same look from Ash, the look that told me I was
> failing as a parent.
>
>
>                  Eventually I got to the bottom of the basket, and there it
> was, the prize, one synthetic dinosaur, hard and gnawed on, the sort of
> thing that lays around and then when one steps on it, one yells, “What the
> hell is that?” because of all the sharp spiky protuberances that are meant
> to represent whatever kind of dinosaur this is supposed to be.
>
>
>                  Ash’s eyes dilated when he saw it, and I’m certain he
> started to drool. I held it out to him an he grabbed it, as if I might take
> it back if he didn’t jump on it.
>
>
>                  He moved about a foot away from me and relaxed with his
> dinosaur. THIS was what he wanted, this was the prize! All those toys, and
> it was the one at the bottom of the basket that he had to have.
>
>
>                  Yes, we do say “what the hell” around here a lot.
>
>
>                  The living room was a shambles, toys strewn from end to
> end, but since that’s how it normally looks anyway, I just put my feet back
> up and watched him play.
>