Follow-up on the Missing Waffle Cone and Thensome

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Well, the evidence has been dropped and frankly, the cup segments weren’t there. So I had to use self-hypnosis on-the-fly to re-visit the scene, and what was apparent that night was the two prime suspects were busy. Pippin was hunting the Papaya Tree Rat…

and Raven was busy running around and shoving toys at me…

They were both occupied. Actually, all were occupied outside with me except for the non-Raven in this picture.

That is part one of the evidence.

Part two was the plastic spoon that came along with the waffle cone. It had been splintered all over the pavers, and there was several pieces of spoon in the doo-dee in the place where Raven and Luigi deposit their daily or twice-daily gifts. I give Raven a lot of credit for mischief, but the credit for being the brains behind the Waffle Cone caper goes to Luigi.

Congrats, big guy, for being labeled. We all go through it.

Next, we find these two beautiful doves upon the utility lines. I innocently started taking pictures of them…this is one.

Then, with the snap of the next picture…we have a pre-Valentine day love fest.

X-rated stuff!

Mercury is still in retrograde. I just went into the kitchen and turned on the light. Nothing. No light. Oh, the light’s up there still on the ceiling. But it’s not going on. All four of those fluorescents are deadsville. <sigh> Maybe tomorrow? My dinner was not going to ring – rice cooker – so after an hour, I decided to eat whatever’s in there. An hour? You think rice would be cooked by then? Seems so to me.

Back to the weekend. Look at what was outside our window.

Dogs went crazy. Here kitty! Here!

Look who stopped by!

Hi!

These roses bloomed just for my friends’ visit! More Valentine’s Day activity, I say.

Ginger’s main lump is so very large. Think grapefruit-sized. This is a lovely picture of her…lump is unavailable.

I ran into a friend who has Golden Retrievers Sunday. She told me how many of hers died of cancer, I was appalled. The last one, she said, came up sick suddenly and they took him to the vet and found the dog was full of cancer. How amazing these dogs are that they hide their pain so well. If not for Ginger’s apparent symptoms, the lumps, I wouldn’t know she had cancer.

I wanted that cancer to go away. I can’t fool myself. The lump won’t let me. But I am still feeding her the herbs and vitamins and mushrooms. I think that is helping to keep her with me longer. She is a gem of a Dobergirl. She is slowing down some. Everyday is a blessing, though. When it comes down to it, we should all think that way because it is the case.

Case of the Missing Coldstone Waffle Cone

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9:56 pm – I walked to the front door, hands full, waved good-bye to my friends and shut the door. My Doberchildren greeted me with yelps of joy, demand barking and pokes to the legs. I had my hands full with jackets, purse, and the waffle cup with melted coffee ice cream that I hadn’t gotten to eat yet. I put everything down somewhere, and opened the back door so the stampeding Doberherd could enjoy the cool air.

The papaya tree rat, I assume, was what caught half the herds interest. It was not a squirrel, so the full posse was not interested in the goings-on of those that surrounded an area and maintained a perimeter until 10 to 15 minutes later when I called everyone into the house. Immediately before that, I was thinking about divvying up that waffle cone to a few deserving Doberchildren.

10:19 pm – I went for my waffle cone, but notice something suspicious when I reached for it. There was no cone. No cone, no yummy liquid ice cream, no paper cup holding it. Huh?

10:20 pm – I searched other places where I may have stashed that cone, but it wasn’t there either. The cone left the planet, took a hike, was no more.

10:21 pm – I looked around me, and wondered. Could one of the innocent faces surrounding me have put paws on stove, pulled cone and all off and eaten it? I thought about it, and decided yes, that could have happened. There are two particular characters amongst the posse toward whom I hold these suspicions.

Suspect #1 – Pippin

Altnames: Pippin Shitz, Pips, Pippinator

Pippin has a grab-and-eat rap sheet a mile long. Her most monumental heist was 16 cooked chicken thighs cooling on a plate in the sink – plucked out and devoured all 16 of them in under 3 minutes. She’s the shortest Doberchild in the household, has a bum front elbow, but neither of those hindrances slow her down. Her drive is bigger than her midget size and her mechanically challenged limb combined. Was seen dodging the nosy noses of several of Fort Doberdale’s finest sinffers shortly after the waffle cone went missing.

Suspect #2 – Raven

Altnames: Little Big Pants, Raving Raven

Raven’s been seen with paws on top of tables, chest freezers, crates, you name it. She’s comfortable walking on tables, flower beds, through papaya trees, and if not for gravity, the ceiling would be her stomping ground. No rap sheet yet on grab-and-eat. Continue to monitor.

Evidence will be collected in the a.m. Most likely, if perp is caught in the act of taking dump, cardboard cup fragments will close this case.

Follow-up then.

Oliver and The Psychic

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Last night I called Cat Chat on Sirus radio, and after waiting 32 minutes, got to talk to Ann Marie Sawicki.  She is very popular!

My question revolved around Oliver.

About six or seven weeks ago, he came inside with a nickel-sized gash in his left side.  Eeek!  The next day or two, he had one on his outter right thigh!  I put a t-shirt on him, and went looking around the back yard for that chunk of fur that was missing.  Didn’t find it.  Meanwhile, Ollie worked hard to shake the shirt.

When I got on the air, Ann Marie asked about fencing, and I told her we have wooden around the yard and metal around the plants.  Tracie thought that was a clue, but Ann Marie asked if there are cats and if Ollie would have jumped at a cat.  We have two cat neighbors, but only one has the nerve to walk along the fence and that’s only at night.  Also, Ollie’s not a jumper.

Ollie’s background – he was boarded in a vet’s office from his 3rd month birthday to his 1st year birthday.  He had a buddy in there, a GSD, but not in the same containment, and when the vet office got a call from the owners who decided to stay in Canada, it wasn’t a good call.  “We don’t want our dogs.  Do whatever you need to.”  This was after these people paid a $6,000 bill along the way for boarding and care.  Lucky for Ollie, he landed in rescue and I was looking for a handsome Doberboy to be a playmate for the Queen Mother, an only child back then.

While in boarding, Ollie had to entertain himself for hours, and when I got him, realized he must have spun in little circles when he got excited about something or out of boredom.  He knocked himself in the head a lot at first because he moved around in a sudden swoop and didn’t realize in the real world, such things as furniture exists.  He learned.  Now when he gets excited, as in there is a squirrel running by the FD campus, he runs in big circles on his paved track.  But Ollie doesn’t jump up on anything except the furniture.  He’s a spinner, not a jumper.

After I said no to the cat/jumping answer, Tracie asked me a few questions about Ollie while Ann Marie tried to connect to my $6,000 dog on the psychic level.  Tracie applauded that Oliver has natural ears, and I told her I was pro-tail, too.  I told her that I’d put a t-shirt on Oliver when he had his boo-boo’s because let’s face it, you cannot keep an Ace bandage around the middle of your dog.  I know.  I’ve tried.

Then Ann Marie came back in and said she’d connected to Oliver and he didn’t want to talk about it.  Great.  I’d waited for 32 minutes, and the Divo didn’t want to talk about it?

Ann Marie said that Oliver said he did something stupid when he got gashed, and didn’t think I would see it.  Ann Marie told him, “Yes, but you did it twice.”  Ollie returned with, “Yes, I know.  I was strutting my stuff and did something stupid, and won’t do it again.”

Well, so far he hasn’t done it again, but dagnabbit, I wanted to find the place in the yard that bit him, so I could fix it.  I suppose it will remain a mystery at this point, and any fur that had been hanging from the spot is gone.  I’d wondered, though, with the way these kids play fetch games, if Ollie’s fur wasn’t in between someone’s teeth.

Na.

As The Diva Turns – Sunday’s AKC Trial

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Today was Baby Diva’s second trial, and my first AKC Disqualification with a dog.  OK, Baby is not a dog exactly, she’s a Diva.  And whether she is born a dog, a human, or a cat, she is going to be a Diva.  That’s who she is.   It was a hard sell this morning for me to get up.  I had ideas that the day wasn’t going to be equally impressive as yesterday was, but I had to live it to find out.  I pushed any negative ideas about Baby failing the stand, or getting up on her stays, far out of my head, and focused on all that she would do.  Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Baby had evil ideas brewing.  Here we are shortly after waking up.  One of us is not trying to be happy. We arrived at the arena.  This is such a lovely statue.

In the ring, Baby started off with a good sit or two, but slowly, she crept out in front of me each time, until the last one before the recall, where she stopped turned her rear end outward, and sat sideways right in front of me.  Oh, I was so happy to hear the judge chuckle at that.  Oh ha ha ha.  Because I knew what was going on.  Baby was testing her boundaries.  I couldn’t correct her rude behavior, and she now knew it as we set up for the last of the moving exercises – the recall. 

The judge asked if I were ready.  A frog kept the answer in my throat until I ribbeted it out.  “Yes.”  So he told me to leave my dog, my Diva, the Queen Mother of Fort Doberdale and walk and walk and walk till I got to the other side of the ring.  I did that.  The whole time wondering what Baby had in mind for me.  I halfway expected her to be up when I’d turned around, but she was still seated, with an evil gleam in her eye.  The judge told me to call my dog. 

Baby’s head turned.  “Dog?” 

Loud and clear, I said, “Baby come!” That’s when the Diva started paying me back her grudge dollars.  She took about five steps straight toward me before the look in her eye and her body’s direction turned, and she took off – right out that ring.  I stood there the whole time waiting for my dog to come because I knew THAT could not be MY dog!  No no no.  Until the judge stepped in, and asked people on the outskirts to catch that wretched beast that just embarrassed me and forfeited our $22, I had no idea WHOSE dog that was. 

Well, there went Baby’s chicken wings.  I promised her a week’s worth of raw chicken wings for breakfast – her favorite – if she passed Sat and Sun.  Just passed.  Nothing spectacular.  She didn’t pass, but she did get her minutes of spectacular fame.  And do you know what happened next?  The judge told me Baby and I were NOT allowed back in the ring for the long sits and downs due to some uppity rule by the AKC that dogs running amuck are not permitted to rejoin the civilized members of the class. 

I walked out of that ring after someone fetched her for me, and I nearly smacked a woman on the head with my arm which was connected to that Divabeast’s leash being I was not paying attention.  That went over well. 

I started to crawl back to our station when I ran into the man with the red/tan Dobergirl and we chatted.  He told me about the day his other Dobie, a red boy named Scout, ran out of the ring on a recall because on the way into the ring, Scout eyed the pile of Frisbees on the judge’s tables that were awards and wanted one.  So he made a beeline to that table on his recall, grabbed the Frisbee on top of the pile and went looking for someone to throw it for him.  He, too, was caught – caught red-handed with Frisbee in mouth.  He had to give that Frisbee back, too, because they are for that same civilized group that Baby didn’t belong to today.

Well, I wasn’t talking to Baby most of the rest of the day, and she continued to be obnoxious to me. We did get an award for the previous day, so she then tried to work me with that look that said, “You know you love me.”

This is the High Working Dog in trial awards – a lovely ribbon, tote and stuffed toy.  (We won the red soft crate in the raffle.  Annie will fit in that one.  We also won a chair in the raffle and a nifty cushion in that soft-sided crate.)

We also got a cookie jar with a really cute duckie that wags its tail feathers when the toy is squeaked.  There were also treats in the jar, a clicker, and that was for High Dobermann for Saturday.

After we finished the raffle, I had a chicken sandwich.  Baby wasn’t allowed to join me due to regulations of the arena, but to make amends, I sneaked some back in and gave it to her.  She took it and spat it on the ground.  SPAT IT ON THE GROUND!  That’s all sister.  I said, “Baby, you eat that and you eat that now before I shove it up your nose!” She looked at it, flipped it around, and with her front teethies, pulled the chicken off the bread, ate the chicken, and left the bread behind.  I guess she’s on a low-carb diet.  Or she was just being a bee-othcy Diva. Here’s a picture of Baby snubbing her leftovers.

She didn’t want the Animal crackers she usually loves, the Beefeater’s stick, or the chicken flavored bread. She’s a Diva.That brings me to this boy.

Morris will not work for his Rottie mom, aka Raffle Goddess, in the ring anymore.  Yesterday, he got a total of 27 points out of 200 in Open B.  I say he is a Divo. A few weeks ago during obedience night practice, I said hello to Morris.  He was lying down by the bleachers.  Baby greeted him too.  During this time, I gave Baby an Obey treat.  She loves them.  Morris’s eyes swelled, so I offered him one.  Most dogs as big as Morris would take it and swallow it whole.  Not Morris.  He took the treat – size of my pinky finger nail – crunched it in half as he lay there on the ground, spat the 2 pieces out, sniffed, OK not bad, so took one half in and crunched it and swallowed.  OK, not bad.  Took the other half and ate it.  This while Baby watched.  Baby LOVES to do that to her subjects at home…she is the Queen Mother.  If she can prolong eating something, so they can watch her eat, all the better.Then I watched Morris in the ring with his handler, and saw how he, too, was paying back grudge dollars.  That is when I had to come to the conclusion that Morris and Baby are cut out of the same cloth – the Diva/Divo cloth.  Morris is a Divo. 

His Rottie Mom is handing Morris’s obedience reigns over to his Rottie Dad, so we will see what transpires there. Morris seems to be a Daddy’s boy, and no matter what, you can’t change that. A Divo Daddy’s Boy! God bless him, and his Rottie parents. (I wish someone would say that to me and my Rotten…er, Royal DoberDiva.)

To end this story on a sweet note, here’s a red rose that was blooming in my garden over the weekend.

Helen