The Bag Rod-y

Like most of us, Rod loves the sound of a good paper tear.  His favorite part of any shopping trip is when I come home and give him the receipt or paper bag to rip to shreds.  He gets really into it and I am pretty sure he is imagining something other than paper being ripped apart.

When the paper has been properly killed, he lays down and lets the shreds envelope his body.

Once we reach this stage, I like to try to pick up the pieces, however I learned early this is not part of Rod's basking plan.

He goes from laying blissfully...

...to claiming his pieces.  Apparently, I have not received the necessary clearance to touch the bag pieces.

This look clearly says, "don't touch my stuff, lady."

Cleaning time has been post-poned.

Buggie Rod

There are pros and cons to owning an intensely alert Doxie.  One con is the slightest noise will rouse them from a deep sleep and cause raucous barking while you are also in a deep sleep.  Though Rod lacks the power of speech, he does have the power that comes with using a long nose to point and was able to convey that there is a noise downstairs in the middle of the night!

I tried to lure him back to bed, but he was having none of it. 

I listened myself, and indeed heard a strange clicking noise coming from downstairs.

Upon further investigation, it seemed like it was coming from the downstairs window.  My first thought was an intruder was trying to break through the window screen. But then I saw it…the lightening bug that could not get his butt to light up, causing it to click.

My fright then turned to disgust and Rod's fright turned to excitement.  He found the intruder!

Once the bug was removed, Rod was able to fall back to sleep in no time, having done his job for the evening.  The threat was neutralized!

However, some of us stayed awake, thinking of all the potential bugs hanging around the house.

Rod and the Hurricane

Since we live in Virginia, Rod and our family got our first hurricane experience this weekend.  Rod handled the wind and rain like a champ, watching and waiting for the storm to be over.

That is, until he needed to go to the bathroom. 

Which he refused to do for quite a while, extending our time outside.

He was no longer amused or entertained by Hurricane Irene.

But he got over it and did what we all do on stormy days.

But he still kept an eye on the hurricane as is stormed into the night...



Like a champ.

Rod gives me a scare.

When Rod was just a young pup, he gave me a bit of a scare.  I was hanging out around the house when I noticed a trail of blood leading to Rod, and he seemed distressed about something on his face.  I could tell his mouth was bloody and drool was coming out.  I of course panicked and went to see what was wrong.

 

When I got to him, I realized he was just going through what we all go through at a young age: losing our baby teeth!  In this particular instance, his tooth was quite loose and was hanging out of his mouth at a perfect right angle.  He did not like that nor did he appreciate my attention to his mouth.

 After that, he lost all his baby teeth in private and I kept finding them around the house.

And for a while, his mouth looked like this:

But now he has this lovely set of chompers!

He still does not appreciate his mouth being touched. 

Rod and the Cicada

Like most of us, Rod is both attracted to and weirded out by cicada shells.  This causes him internal conflict when he encounters them so he deals with it accordingly - stretches as far as his body will allow.

Today, he finally summoned the courage to fully investigate a shell.

Leaving only carnage behind.

He then did the most logical thing in the world - ate the pieces.

Yum!

Rod’s house for sale? I don’t think so.

One of my favorite Rod moments of all time was when our house was on the market and we were preparing to close on the house with a buyer.  Due to a miscommunication, our appraiser entered the house while Rod was home alone.  Rod is never crated and waits for me at the top of the stairs each day when I come home from work.

The appraiser entered the house and surveyed the downstairs.  Looks good! Once she got to the bottom of the stairs, both she and Rod were quite surprised to see each other!  Rod sounded the alarm from the top of the stairs: “Intruder alert! Intruder alert!  You are not my mom!”  Being a doxie, he is trained not to use the stairs.  So he manned his position in a defensive stance and continued to bark at the edge of the stairs.  The appraiser noticed dog biscuits in the kitchen and grabbed a handful to lure Rod into another room.  What happened next went something like this: 

Followed by this:

All in a day’s work.

And STAY out!

Rod does yoga

The way Rod does yoga is different than everyone else.  First, he must escape the restraints that man has placed on him.  I admit I made this step far too easy.  Lately, Rod has been behaving nicely enough out in the front yard that I let him wander around on his own.  He still has his harness on, and he drags his leash around behind him like a prisoner attached to a ball and chain.  I left the leash on for safety purposes and rationalized in my head that the attached leash would give me enough of a reaction time to stomp on it and stop him if he bolted.  I was so proud of my dog for being able to handle this level of freedom! Look at him lounging so nicely:

Yoga day arrived, marked by the 40-something ladies arriving at my yoga-instructor neighbor’s house with their mats.  About an hour later, I was melting in the front yard, though I was sitting in a shady spot mere feet from where Rod lay blissfully overheating in the sun.  And then he saw them - Rod went from lion-reclining to bolt of lightning in seconds.  Yoga ladies!!  

Since I do not have a picture of this, this drawing done from memory will have to do:

Rod could hardly decide which lady to bark at first, so there was a bit of confusion and juking between them at the beginning.  I don’t know if this was part of his evasion tactic to throw me off but if it was it certainly worked.  His leash was bouncing from pavement to air crazily as he formed a large circle of bark around the poor woman in front.  Behind his magical flying leash was me whisper-screaming his name in order to avoid a bigger scene then we already were.  Once he felt that a sufficient number of circles was made, he moved onto the next lady who was carrying her yoga mat, laughing uncontrollably at this dog and his owner.  His leash was just out of reach, so I kept stomping on the ground trying to catch it under my foot, only to be met with pure pavement each time.  I believe we looked like this:

 

One lady yelled out between gasps of laughter, “He’s having the time of his life!”  And indeed he was.  These ladies were nice enough to stand still and let this scene happen around them as I lunged at Rod’s leash with my various limbs.  After a couple minutes, Rod felt that his work here was done and trotted calmly back into our yard, tail up and head held high.  I apologized and walked away with my tail tucked between my legs.  Pretty common reaction all around.