Ruff morning

Trike spent the last four days with A's mom. In case you don't already know, Trike is like our adopted first child. He's a sixteen year old Jack Russell Terrier who was the runt of the litter, beat up and knocked around during his first decade and now spoiled rotten in his middle age. We ended up with him the first summer we owned our house and he has been the 12 lb terror of the block for the last six years. Had I known the 20+ year life expectancy of his breed I would have maybe been more discretionary about taking him in.

I will admit he is a very smart dog. He has the mind of say a really outgoing 2 year old child. The stubbornness, inability to differentiate between safety and danger, size or stranger danger vs. family friend. He is very defensive of children and other small dogs wrestling with big dogs, yet he thinks he is the biggest of them all. There is not a large dog at the park of whom he has not tried to either kill or hump.

At any rate, he spent a good part of the week doing what he loves most; getting his way. My mother in law adores Trike and takes him everywhere with her. Sometimes she has to keystone him in a large purse to get him into the grocery store or bank. Mostly he struts alongside her to the retirement home to visit A's grandmother and the other elderly. Trike understands environments and behaves like a princely little boy who would otherwise get the crap beat out of him on the schoolyard. Then when at her house, takes off his sweater vest and plays with a rambunctious rampage of a little bully who cares not for furniture or knickknacks. Mostly he loves the traction of wall to wall carpet for which we do not have at our hardwood floored house.

So four days with Grandma is like ten days at Disneyland for a kid. He plays indoors, outdoors, goes for walks, pees on new bushes and barks at a different mailman. He eats off of plates, sleeps in a sleeping bag and this time around, was washed, brushed and had "dogie cologne" applied before coming home. Next time I imagine he'll come home in a leisure suit, gold necklaces and a nigt club stamp on one paw and some trashy poodle who puts out like a cheap prom date hanging on the other.

Trike came home at lunch yesterday. V brought him in, helped me get my lunch together then left in time for my post narcotic ingestion nap. Trike too napped with me in the hospital bed. He bored a path straight to the bottom of the bed, under the covers and went deep sleep till dinner arrived. How he can smell dinner through four layers of sheets and blankets in his sleep but is unable to sniff out his favorite tennis ball in the grass is beyond me.

After dinner and his six hour nap, he again snuggled deep cover near my feet and only moved to kick me and stretch out during the night. At 8 a.m. this morning, after some eleven hours of R & R he came to, looked around, then snuggled back in like a groundhog mid-winter. He'll rise again about two-o'clock when he warms up his vocal cords for the mailman.