TheBanyanTree: Another Dog Story

[Sally Larwood]

I did laugh at this.  Sch a dog thing to do, and I'm so glad you're so well trained.
When Jemima was a puppy, we had a box that was a failed cat house and we kept her toys in it.  Jemima would bury her head in it, pull the toys one by one till she found the one she wanted, then put all the others back.  I wish my kids were so well trained.

Sal 

Sent from my iPad 

On 09/04/2012, at 11:25 AM, Sachet <MountainWhisper at att.net> wrote:

> 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.
>>