Hey, Where’s My Candy?

We had quite a night on Saturday. Strange creatures rang our doorbell and demanded candy.

Say what?

It was disturbing, so disturbing I ended up doing a lot of barking that night and being sent to my mat to wait and watch as all sorts of candy went out the door in the hands of the little, strange creatures.

I tell you, if I had the time, I could write quite a book on humans. They have the oddest rituals none of which involve giving candy to dogs.

Bummer, though Gretchen tells me I wouldn’t like the results. There are so many times when I have to trust her. It’s a good thing I do.

In addition to the candy-thieving munchkins, somehow we gained an extra hour and boy, do I ever feel fat (tee hee!). Actually, it threw me off my game. Normally I sleep and then rise when the sun peeks through the windows, but I swear, it peeked earlier than usual. And all day, well, I felt out of sorts and kind of sleepy.

But there was work today, starting with a morning of teaching young students how to write a scene for a movie. Wow, talk about excitement. Those students were like wasps in the summer, buzzing around the room with such purpose, it made my head spin. That’s why Gretchen dropped me off at the house for a brief rest while she picked up Tyson and Rosie for a nice walk through the park.

Gretchen is still working hard to get them to stop following her whenever she takes pictures, but they are so intent on the treats in her backpack, pockets, and hands, they follow her like little lambs after their mother. They’re not exactly little lambs, though are they?

Once she dropped them off at home, she picked up Gemma and headed back to the house to get me. I was happy to see Gemma who seemed unfazed by any of the weird happenings of the weekend. She was into hunting squirrels and while Gretchen tried to take pictures of us, we sat patiently and watched the squirrels off in the distance.

Did you see that?

Once we dropped Gemma off at home, we picked up Oshi and Perrito and headed over the tennis courts for a game of fetch. Well, I fetched, as usual, and Perrito chased after me or begged treats from Gretchen while Oshi rolled in the crumbs Perrito left on the ground. How silly is that?

See how differently we beg? Perrito is like white on rice giving that pleading look up from his Cone of Shame. I do what I’m told (most of the time) and lie down until the treat is delivered. Oshi looks excited, but never eats the treats. Never. What’s with that?

After dropping the boys off back at home, we wandered over to Saber’s house where, once again, the boy has grown. He’s bigger than me! See! How’d that happen? They do grow up so fast, don’t they?

We played at the tennis courts too because, unlike the boys next door, Saber really likes to play fetch. He’s getting better at it every day, but isn’t quite as good as it as I am. But he’s still young.

My job, as his older friend, is to torment him, which I enjoy doing very much — teasing him with the ball while he tries to ignore me. It’s hard to do!

We walked over to the school to see if we could visit our student-friend, but apparently, it wasn’t a good day. We were both very sad about that. Then we headed back through the park to Saber’s house where he raced into his kennel to await his treat.

When we left his house, I turned to the right, but Gretchen surprised me and pulled me to the left — back to the park — where we played a game of fetch all alone. That was really nice of her. She knew the weekend had thrown me off and she wanted to ground me in the NOW with one of my favorite activities! And it was really nice because as much as I like her photographs, we just played — no pictures taken.

Now we’re cooking something yummy for dinner because I smell bacon and chicken and lots of garlic. I know that Gretchen likes to give me some of the juices in my kibble from her cooking and tonight, I think my dinner will be particularly delicious.

Until tomorrow,

Rubin