The After-Murphy Blues

It was a rainy Monday morning. The morose, blind dog was curled up in a chair whining gently to himself.
I knew they were coming - the after-Murphy blues - but I was hoping that Ray would be so tired that I wouldn't have to deal with the sad-dog syndrome.
But there he was; sitting, whining gently, remembering the good times. And the worst part was, it wasn't even a sunny day so that we could go for a nice long walk or invite Tucker over to play to make Ray forget for a minute.
I decided that, like in the movie "About a Boy," (good movie - I give it a thumbs-up), I would try to break Ray's day into little chunks of time where something good would happen.
Morning - For breakfast (which he was initially too sad to eat), he got a squirt of whipped cream on his dog food (whipped cream makes everything better) - 5 minutes.
Mid morning - We squeezed in a walk between the heavy rains - 20 minutes
Later morning - I gave him a fabric softener dryer sheet (while I was doing laundry) so that he could make himself smell fresh (after Murphy left, he smelled like dog-spit) - 5 minutes
Afternoon - I bought him some new toys (while I was running errands) to replace the defaced, destuffed, decapitated ones that he and Murphy tore through. Then we played with them - 30 minutes or so (and off and on again throughout the day)
Mid afternoon - We squeezed in another walk between raindrops - 20 minutes.
Late afternoon - I let him pick a rawhide flip out of the bag of flips. I didn't even object when he chose two at once. Then we played keepaway around the coffee table - 15 minutes (and off and on again for the rest of the afternoon).
Later afternoon - Dinner - 5 minutes.
That brought us right up to bedtime, which on a gloomy, rainy day is about 5:00.
It's 5:30. He's sleeping. We made it through the after-Murphy blues.