Day 177

This morning I had Sanity retrieve my shoes, socks and the slippers. She did the first sock without a hitch. Then came the troubles. The second sock she decided to kill and keep for herself. NOT! So this meant five repetitions of retrieving a simple sock before I finally got a retrieve I was satisfied with, only to send her for the first shoe and be told to "get lost". NOT!

And so, we argued over both shoes and then over both slippers. In the end she managed to retrieve all of them in a manner I found to be at last acceptable. Sent Sanity, Wrap and the singleton boarder outside while I did a few things. After a week of staying out of the flower bed, I can only conclude there just wasn't enough activity going on outside and so she must have burned off some of that energy by jumping back and forth over the fence, while taking the time to tear up a thing or two. At this point, I am thinking I really am going to figure out a way to cobble together some sort of top. I think if I use it long enough to get in a couple good corrections, she will take her leaking energy elsewhere. Better to do it now while the flowerbed is dormant than to be crying and moaning about it in the spring.

And then there was the matter of the plastic knife. I know it was stolen from the counter in the kitchen. I know she planed on chewing it up. I know she sure didn't expect it to become the retrieve object of the week. Over and over we practiced retrieving that fool knife. Over and over she claimed she couldn't see it. Well yes, it is true that if you lay on top of it you won't be able to see it, but that does not exempt you from the requirement of retrieving it because I said so.

Then there was the insistence that it was too close to the floor and too flat. Sorry, but that dog won't hunt, cause you are the one who stole it from the kitchen counter to begin with and now you will be responsible for retrieving it. Later, while outside I managed to catch her looking first with interest and then starting to jump back into the flower bed. Humm...there seems to be a pattern here somewhere.