I borrow James & Dalia’s dogs Nieve & Bagheera pretty regularly so that they can play with Ruby (or I take Ruby over there to pester their dogs…either way, it works). I had the dogs over today ’cause Ruby was full of beans, and I personally couldn’t wear her out! I’d taken her on about an hour-and-a-half walk in the morning, then left to run some errands. When I got home, I needed to bake some bagels, make a few hats, and apply for some jobs, but the dog had other ideas. She was more into pacing around and sighing piteously, or getting all scampery if I looked like I was heading for the back door.
Obviously, if I wanted to get anything accomplished in peace, I would need to go and borrow the neighbor dogs.
I realized today that the three of them totally have the Three Stooges’ roles down solid. Nieve is obviously the Moe of our group. She’s in charge, she delivers all of the beatdowns, receives very few beatdowns. Bagheera is the Curly of the group: low man on the totem pole, a bumbling bungler, gets most of the beatdowns, gives out very few. Ruby is Larry: dopey, perpetually caught in the middle of the mayhem, and has hair that sticks way out behind her ears.
The picture above is actually from Sunday, when Ruby and Bagheera got themselves gloriously filthy playing in the snow melting off from Saturday’s surprise snowstorm.
Bagheera, the young galloot, is covered in mud and slobber.
Ruby, the young fool, is covered in slobber and mud (and sawdust)
This evening, she is only covered in slobber. Bagheera is a very drooly pup, and their favorite-favoritest game is Head Bitey.
Don’t ask me. Dogs think this is REALLY fun for some reason.
Seriously…they love this game.
Ruby was a little bit in disgrace today…there’s a reason I wouldn’t let her out in the backyard when she kept hinting by the backdoor that she’d like to go out. Yesterday, I put her outside while I did the vacuuming so that she wouldn’t try to herd the vacuum-cleaner, and while she was out there, she discovered and exploited a breach in the perimeter. When I went out to call her back in….no dog! I kind of freaked out, though I knew that she was not likely to stray very far. Indeed, I went out front and called her and she came racing down from the front porch two houses East.
I hustled her into the house and tried to figure out where she had gotten out. There was a low spot in the fence next to the front gate that I think was her escape route, and has since been wired up so that it’s taut.
Anyway, after I let her back inside, she was acting kind of sketchy. She guzzled down a LOT of water, and just didn’t act right. She kept hanging around the bedroom door and when I went into the bedroom to put away some laundry, she beelined to the rug she sleeps on, curled up, and began to *heave*
I rolled away the good rug and not a moment too soon. She horked up a truly prodigious and shocking amount of probably casserole onto the bare floor. I had no idea that such a dog of her size could hold that much yuck. Well, obviously she couldn’t hold that much yuck, hence the barfage. Dees-gusting. So I cleaned it up and decided to keep an eye on her.
Today, she was fine, except for the obsession with going out in the back door (and believe me, I was on to her when she’d park next to the backdoor, look meaningfully at it, and lick her chops!). Well, fine except for a wicked case of flatulence, which is the usual result from the consumption of unauthorized foodstuffs.
I figured that the backyard was probably secure once again, but that she was almost certainly going to be unable to escape with about 40lb of Great Pyrenees puppy attached to the scruff of her neck. In fact, today, she seemed to have extra energy to burn off, and she was rollin’ Bagheera like a chump. I told her to enjoy it while it lasts, ’cause pretty soon he’ll outweigh her overwhelmingly and her days of knocking him cockeyed will be over.