The Morning Routine

Every morning we have the same routine: Arrive at 7:30 am out of coat. I get settled into my office or the main library as Her Royal Highness gets settled in or has students come to say hello.

Last Wednesday, I was working in the main library and had HRH connected to my chair with her bone nearby. I always have a big crowd of kids in the library in the morning. HRH was playing with the bone, which involved a great deal of rolling around on the floor, flipping over and then in deep despair, howling at the temerity of the bone not falling apart as she wished. When she did this, Carter, who was sitting two tables over leaped to his feet and cried out,

"I've got this!" and ran over to HRH carrying only his chemistry book. Then he proceeded to calm down HRH for the next 20 minutes until classes started at 8 am, all the while continuing to study his chemistry (our students are compassionate and focussed! 8-).

Here's a shot of the two of them. HRH actually did calm down. She doesn't do that for most people. Carter has the touch.

Indestructible Bone

Turns out, Her Royal Highness Berkeley has the best teeth on the planet. They are made of solid diamonds and can chew through a block of wood in seconds flat. In fact, in a race between HRH and the dreaded Formosan termite HRH might win if the goal were to chew up an expensive dog toy that marketed itself as indestructible.

If the package said triple seamed and made from extinct weatherproof sloths who died from sleep and old age, never from a cut, tear or stab wound, then it took ten seconds longer for her to rip through it.

At the last puppy meeting we were told to look for Nylabones, but I was thinking about the greenies and easy chews that she had easily demolished. No, no, they said. There are others. Much harder. Tougher bones.

These bones are not at MY Petsmart. So I went to another. There they were. Big fat bones. HARD, INDESTRUCTIBLE BONES. Hmm, yeah. I had been told that before.

We would see.

This video was taken in the library. We learned to never let her chew this bone in the library because

1. It makes a hell of a racket when she flings it around and it hits the metal shelves!

2. She cries or growls when it doesn't fall apart like she wants it to

3. The hopping, dancing and butt jumping is extremely destracting to the children and to me and really funny and we don't do our work and end up taking video and laughing at her, which is bad, very bad.

It should be quiet in the library. Bad HRH. Bad Librarian. 8-)

Evil Wing-Loving Backyard Neighbors

I will confess right now to a bit of insanity right up front, so all of you readers who aren't close friends and family might be surprised. But perhaps a bit of my craziness has come through in my blog posts, so this story won't be a surprise. Needless to say, my husband just shook his head and my friends Christy and Michele roared with laughter at me.

Last week I let the dogs out into the backyard to busy busy for the last time of the evening. Bingo took a little jaunt out into the bushes and when he came back it was clear there was something in his mouth.

"Drop it." He did. He's very good at dropping it and out plops this chicken wing. Not a hot wing with meat still on it, but a chicken wing bone, no meat on it all. "Good boy!" I pick up the nasty chicken bone and look into the dark of the back yard and think to myself, "What in the great good night is a chicken wing doing in my back yard?"

The next night, I let the dogs out to do their busy, busy and what do you know? Bingo brings back ANOTHER chicken wing! OMG! Now, I'm incensed. I look into the dark of the backyard and I see the porchlight of our backyard neighbors and it hits me. Our neighbors are eating chicken wings and throwing them over the fence. I narrow my eyes and glare at their porch light. Don't they know what chicken bones can do to dog? How many wings are in my back yard? I'm going to have to do a wing search and ferret out all the chicken bones those cretins have tossed over their shoulder without a care in the world. I can picture it now. Sitting by their pool, big bowl of wings, lawn chairs backing up to the fence, wing goes in their gaping maw of a mouth, then flip, over the fence where my unsuspecting puppy snarfs it up only to be told to Drop It.

I should eat a big bowl of wings and start flipping them into their pool and see how they like those bones! But that seems kind of gross and unhygenic and I think they have children and what if that creates some weird sort of bacteria in the pool? That might result in a House episode that ends up sending me to prison for making children ill with a potentially life threatening bacteria all because my neighbors didn't want to get a trashcan for their wings. Sounds a bit silly. I'll have to think out this revenge thing a bit more.

So I pondered. And pondered.

This morning Fred brought in another bone Bingo had found. Fred said it was clearly the leg of a wild bird that had died. Fred thinks that a wild bird died in our yard, decomposed naturally and Bingo found the bones and was bringing them in to us, one at a time, leaving the neighbors blameless.

I guess I should forgive our neighbors. They might even be vegetarians for all I know. Turns out Mother Nature is to blame. I don't think I can get revenge on her.