When I walked in this evening, Raven greeted me with the same frantic barking she often does once I open the front door. I try to ignore her. And on the occasion that she keeps yap shut and I get all the way in and shut the door, I will let her out of her crate first as reward.

Tonight, yap was not shut, so I by-passed Raven, and I let the lovely Lilian out, so she could be first to tend to business and find the Halloween Cuz ball to covet.

Lilian’s crate was free of pee this evening. Oh happy day!

I made a special crate-on-wheels for Lilian, and I keep it by the back door, which is Lilian’s special place, being the crate needs to be washed out from Miss Lilian’s leaky back faucet more often than not.

I went back to Raven, and bent down in front of her crate to watch her. She was in Raven’s world, and I dont think she saw me for quite a while. I talked to her and she continued on in a frantic monolog about what happened today, what she wanted to happen tonight, and what she wanted for dinner. At one point, hello, she sat on her food bowl which was upside down in the corner in the back of the crate. It’s stainless steel. One would think it would be a fairly cool jolt, but Raven kept sitting and barking.

I continued talking to her calmly, and then there was a point where she stopped barking. For more than just to take a breath, she stopped. So I counted to three, and told her how wonderfully good she was (lie lie lie), then stood up and opened her crate.

Zowie! She was off and running, but I grabbed her harness and brought her ’round to me. I held her and told her to calm her bad self down…softly, calmly…but she was going on about how she just couldn’t. However, after a lengthy discussion, she just did. She was calming herself down, and as soon as I told her how good she was and I let her go, she rammed into the back door. So I pulled her off, and asked her nicely to sit. She did. And I opened the door. She ran thru, so I shut the door. Then she body slammed herself back into the door. She’s so precious.

We all know that it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, and I take advantage of that well-known fact often. Raven’s an adolescent Doberwomann, so I forgive her “change-my-mind” antics. Most of the time.

I changed into dog clothes, and realized afterwards that the rice cooker hadn’t started rolling yet. The timer was off by an hour. I guess I can’t count as well as I used to. But this happened to be a good thing because I had wanted to put a pound of bacon in the rice tonight, and so, I did. We are having bacon-rice, eggs, and either cheese or string beans. I haven’t decided yet.

While doing that, my wonderful Doberchildren and Raven went outside and found remnants of a visit from Clem on the ground. Clem is our mischievious squirrel and he’d been up in the pine tree tasting the delights from the spirit of Eule Gibbons. When he’s finished with a cone, he drops the core, much like a corn cob. Sometimes, he throws down perfectly good whole cones. Wherever he choses to eat, he seems to taunt the dogs.

I grabbed the pooper scooper to collect what I could and had a nice collection as I walked back to the pooper scooper barrel…er, bucket. Raven was walking ahead of me, as her PITA self often does. Right in the middle of from here to there, she stopped to pick up one of Clem’s discards. I rammed into her, and poop fell off the scooper and guess what I stepped in? OK…this made up for the happy dance I did about not having to wash out Lilian’s crate tonight. Raven is getting good at pulling the happiness carpet right out from under me.

I hobbled over to wash the sole of my shoe off, unloaded the remainder of doo-dee into bucket, then rinsed the pavers off. The middle pavers where the poop remnants were is the dip-area. So when rinsing it off, a lake forms. This happened to be a polluted lake. So I had to clean it twice as much with broom and disinfectant. This gave the Doberkids plenty of time to find a way to get their paws wet so they could walk in and out of the house with wet paws. I finally got the “wipe your feet” blanket down after the paver job was done. Then I had one question to answer.

Where’s Raven’s scrawny little neck? I want to hug it tightly tonight! Raaaaven!