I did something wonderful last night.

I shut off the alarm clock. It deserved cheers. It was a very long week, one in which I got very little sleep due to bad dreams. This edition was about two forms. I had to have one form correct before I could submit the second. Needless to say, for reasons I never understood after I woke up, the first form was never completed. I hate these harassing dreams; it's like being chased.

So we slept in this morning, at least until before 9:30. We ate breakfast on the run because I wanted to take Tucker to the dog park this morning. We finally got out of the house at 10:30.

Tucker seemed to have a good time at the dog park. We didn't let him off the leash because he doesn't always come when called. Also, the worrisome thing was a sign on the gate that said "large dogs." I looked; there wasn't another enclosure for smaller dogs. So that means small dogs can't go to the dog park? He did get defensive at a pair of black standard poodles, but made a buddy, a mixed-breed short-haired brown dog a little bit larger than he was. This dog would run up to the fence and greet every new dog coming in. We actually arrived during a lull, with only this brown dog there for a while. As we were leaving, the second shift showed up: a couple with two Great Pyrenees (Tucker touched noses with them politely), a lab, a  Golden Retriever, and a couple of other mixed breeds.

We also went to Petsmart, as we needed to get him a new extendible leash (he chewed on the old one and I had it knotted and didn't trust it). We also got a dog whistle, a clicker, and a tie-out line (this is something we want to try for when he goes out at night—he will not be on it unsupervised). A big dog started barking at him, and he stood his ground and yarped back until I pulled him off. I also checked out their PetsHotel service; yow! that's expensive!

After his two adventures we took him home and fed him his breakfast, then went out to finally hunt up a meal for ourselves. We ended up at Golden Corral, where me and my grey streaks and James with his cane got us the senior meal deal; we didn't even ask for it! I had a nice smorgasbord of popcorn shrimp, two spring rolls, honey sesame chicken, pot roast, and a bowl of chicken soup, with a slice of chocolate cake, a chocolate-covered marshmallow, and some watermelon for dessert.

I think we intended to stay out longer, but the heat just started sapping the energy out of us. We stopped at the Town Center Petsmart to see if they had a four-foot leash (we want to keep this in the car; it will also be good for situations where we want to keep him under control, like the Farmer's Market). I bought him a sale priced "Martha Stewart" brand toy (a little hedgehog that he managed to destroy later in a little less than three hours; he chewed the ears and paws off it, eviscerated it and extracted the squeaker—flashback time; Willow always extracted the squeaker from her toys and then lost interest in them—and then tore out about half of the stuffing so the living/dining area looked like a cotton field) and a cheap clicker. We also stopped at Michaels and JoAnn to use some coupons, and by then the heat felt like it had drained us completely. We made one more stop, at Costco to get gas for the truck, and were home by 3:30. We spent the afternoon cooling off and listening to "Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me" and "The Splendid Table" as I was slowly driven mad by the new version of my podcast app, MyPod. The creator has completely redesigned it and while I was exclaiming this morning about how slick it looked, by this afternoon it was driving me wild. The worst part is that it looks like it doesn't keep a record of what you already listened to. That's fine if you are listening to things every week and keeping up to date. I'm still listening to back episodes of "Travel with Rick Steves." Urgh.

Oh, I have definite confirmation that Snowy is indeed talking! I've heard a lot of subvocalizing from him, and sometimes he sounds like he's saying words, but tonight after the podcasts finished, we didn't put the television back on right away and I clearly heard him say "Good boy!" A little later he muttered "Good bird."

Tonight Tucker finished killing the squeak toy. :-)

Labels: birds, dogs, food, pets, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:56:00 PM

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