Fun 'n Games

No pictures today. The only recent ones I have are from last weekend in Vancouver and Comox (no dogs with us anyway) and I’m not posting those yet because SOMEONE may just decide to hop her broken fence and come storming over to my place for telling stories about sunny spots and greenery when she spent that same weekend on the highway to hell in the snow. So, uh, yah, I’ll save those pictures for a different day.

Dog stories though – I have those in abundance. I moved the scat mat to the bottom of the two steps that lead out of the kitchen (this is to keep Rory from peeing on the step, see April 17th post). Not so easily swayed, Rory continues to pee in front of the scat mat. Said pee then travels underneath the scat mat via handy aqueducts (a.k.a grout lines). It’s a wonder he hasn’t electrocuted himself, though I suspect that a 9-volt battery won’t do much damage. Or maybe that’s what he is trying to do – short circuit the mat so he can gain access to the rest of the house. In any event, I ended up having to give the scat mat a shower in the bathtub the other night when I came home. Don’t get me wrong – Rory is as good as gold if somebody is home to hear the bell on the door ring – he’ll ring and ring till you let him out to do his business, but somehow holding his bladder for four hours in the absence of people is beyond him right now. Except at night, when he’ll go for at least eight hours without any trouble. He has also discovered that WHENEVER he rings the bells in the presence of a human he gets to go outside, even if he doesn’t have to pee. He now rings just to go out and play. He also has a new form of outdoor amusement to engage in once he has tired Seth out: he chases snowballs. Our back yard is all hill sloping down to the house. Rory whips up to the top of the hill, finds an area of virgin snow, sticks his head in and uses his muzzle to lift and toss some snow down the hill. In the right conditions, the snow bits become little snow balls and roll down the slope getting bigger as they go. Rory chases and eats them chomp chomp chomp, then goes back to the top of the hill to do it again. We watched him do this for a whole ten minutes the other day before I finally made him come inside. We don’t leave him unattended in the yard and my attention span is obviously not as long as his when it comes to snowballs. Seth is content to watch Rory and his outdoor antics from the comfort of his bed inside the French doors. It’s nice to see that Rory doesn’t rely quite as much on Seth’s presence as he did when he first came home with us. The Chewbacca sessions continue though. It’s mainly Seth, but I think Rory is adding his two cents now. The noises they make when they wrestle make me wonder if there is a Wookiee convention going on in my kitchen. A quick look at YouTube reveals that they are not alone among dogs (and even cats) in their chosen language.