From Z to A

"Where are the zucchini?" asked Gregg. 

"On the kitchen counter." I replied. 

There was a long pause. 

"No, they're not." he said.

I sighed and got out of my chair to point out the obvious. I was thinking that, as usual, he couldn't see what was right in front of his nose. 

But the zucchini weren't on the counter. Maybe, I thought, I'd left them in the fridge. Nope, not there. Maybe I'd accidentally put them in a cabinet. We checked all cabinets. Nothing. I was getting a bit desperate. I wondered if I'd thrown them in the dryer or left them in the bedroom.  I was wandering around the house looking for zucchini but found no zucchini. No zucchini remnants. No skin, no stem. Nothing.

Neither one of us thought that the zucchini could have been a victim of counter-surfing. Our Ray would never have let an entire raw zucchini ever touch his lips never mind steal two of them. But this girl dog...hmmm. And although we wondered, we decided to give Cully the benefit of the doubt and chalk the zucchini up to covid brain. 

Three days later an avocado disappeared off the counter. The pit, however, was found in the backyard being joyfully played with by a certain vegetable-loving hound. 

Victory

Why we call her Miss Pink Belly

 A couple of months ago, I hired a dog trainer. Although we had conquered most of Cully's fear issues, her fear of trash trucks continued to be a problem. And as she became more confident, her dog aggression  seemed to get worse. Although her dog aggression is still not under control, today we walked by a trash truck without Cully trying to back out of her skin, escape to the nearest backyard, or even walk up into the middle of someone's front yard. It has only taken one year, three months, and an enormous amount of treats but she is finally getting it. Although this might seem minor, this a major victory. 

Next up, dog aggression. And then maybe we'll tackle that little issue of counter surfing...

One year, three months.

Weird Coincidence?

Gregg and I like to watch mysteries. Cully is actually named after a character in one of our favorites (Midsomer Murders). So when our girl-hound started digging on the stair landing, my mind immediately assumed that there must be something sinister buried in that spot. Because, you see, that was Ray's favorite indoor place to dig. Outdoors he was not particular and neither is Cully. But indoors they both chose/choose the exact same location. As a matter of fact, Ray dug the stair landing so much that by the time he died there was very little rug remaining there. 

That is a coincidence. But not the weird one. The weird one is in the video. I took the video of Cully on  January 8, 2021 when I just happened to be sitting on the stairs with my laptop and she came up behind me and started digging. And when I found an old video of Ray that I had taken when he was still alive, it was from January 7, 2018. Almost exactly three years to the day from the other. So, do dogs need to go through some weird ritual digging in the early days of the new year to assure a good bone harvest? Or is there a body buried beneath our stairs (cue creepy music).