Sock, I Shall Smite You!

Theo has a new Theo-ism. When Theo is bored the usual game of fetch will not suffice. The antler chew does not entice.

(I was a poet and I didn't know it!)

Usually when Theo gets in this mood it means he wants to jump on my head and bite my ears, or he wants me to chase him around the house. When he's bored, he lives to be chased around the house. Seriously, he'd do it until his legs fell off if I didn't lose interest way before that point was reached.

But sometimes I'm just not in the mood to crawl around on the floor and have a dog jump all over me. Sometimes I'm tired and don't want to run around the house. Sometimes while he's bored, I'm sitting on the couch, doing my own thing. That's when, in recent weeks, he's begun starting in on my feet.

Yes, my feet.

Not Husband's feet. Only mine.

I actually have an aversion to my feet being touched. When Husband and I are snuggling in bed, I will smack him if his feet brush mine. (Ok, actually I resort to whining rather than phsyical abuse, but smacking just sounded better there.) They're extremely ticklish, you see. And they prefer just to be left alone. So naturally, Theo now wants everything to do with them. And being my adorable furkid, I can't but help to give him whatever he wants. So I let him play with my feet.

Gasp!

And here's the thing. You'd think dogs, teeth, sharp, sensitive feet...all bad things would result. But no! Theo, being Theo, wants only to play, not to harm. He knows that his teeth are sharp, so he bites my feet ever so gently. Eep! But he's so gentle that it tickles! I writhe around in agony because it is just about the worst feeling ever, having my feet tickled! But he just wants to play, so I don't discourage him. I grate my teeth and try to think about not being ticklish. But Theo being Theo, he knows I'm hating it, and he only wants to play, not to harm!

So recently he's started going after my sock, rather than the whole foot. Are Corgis smart or what?! It is hilarious! He knows that there is a very thin layer of sock covering the foot, so he attempts to bite the sock and separate it from my foot with his front teeth. Can you imagine? It's too funny! Once he has a first grip on the sock, It. Is. On. A game of tug like you have never imagined starts. He grunts, he growls, and he tugs tugs tugs! I tug back, and we continue this way until the sock comes off. Then he kind of sighs at the anti-climax of his victory. Then he starts on my other sock. lol! It's so cute that sometimes I put my socks back on so we can do it again.

But he won't do it with Husband's socks. Only mine are offensive. Does that mean my feet smell and he's trying to air them out for me? Hmmm...

There is a bit of a downside to this new game. While Theo has every intention of being good and gentle, sometimes when he's gingerly pulling the sock away from my foot, he gets skin. Imagine tiny doggy teeth latching onto the very top of your skin and pulling. Yeah...OUCH! But I don't get mad because he obviously doesn't mean to. When I say "ouch!" he stops, backs away, looks sorry, and then goes back to try again. Hehe. Who would have thought dogs could be sweet and thoughtful? This one is!



Does anyone else have a dog who finds socks particularly offensive? Not sure why my socks started to offend two years later, but that's a dog for you, right? Sometimes things just develop. But people are that way too, I suppose.

Vacationing With The Pups

Check out my food blog for a detailed account of our trip to Napa last Christmas! We piled the pups in the car and had a gay old time together. We only went to one winery that let us take the dogs into their tasting room (Alpha Omega), but they had lots of fun wandering the quiet neighborhoods and doing their part to water the grapes between trips.

Rex, well accustomed to the back seat, was as calm and mellow as ever, but Theo is used to ruling the car. He somehow would manage to worm his way over the seat and into Chris' mom's lap, where he would get a very nice head rub while he napped, ever-triumphant over Rex.

What a trouble maker

Our next vacation is already planned and I can't wait. We'll be in Monterey over Easter, and we wouldn't dream of leaving our furkid at home. Hopefully more fun adventures will be had!

Jealousy

Theo can get very jealous. Sometimes he can be kind of a brat about it. But mostly he's just hopelessly adorable. Unfortunately for Husband, Theo's jealousy never fails to flare up whenever we give each other affection, or really any kind of hands-on attention. Get your mind out of the gutter people! He can be fast asleep upstairs, but if he gets an inkling that Husband is giving me a hug in the kitchen, he comes running downstairs, toy in tow. Because obviously if I have time to give Husband my full attention, I have time to throw a toy for Theo. That's how his adorably puppy mind works, and really, it makes sense to me!

The latest occurance of his jealousy was yesterday. Husband had a rather exhausting weekend that involved trying to lift an entire 32" CRT television by himself because his "buff" wife just isn't as buff as we hoped she would be. Anyway, I was trying to massage the huge knots out of his shoulders when Theo jumped up next to me on the couch and gave me the most hilarious indignant Corgi face you've ever seen. You know the one I mean. Ears up, eyes wide and expectant, practically shaking from the concentration of trying to communicate telepathically with you. I heard the message loud and clear. "Mommy, how dare you give physical attention to Daddy when you could be giving attention to me!" A few seconds later he jumped off the couch and a few seconds after that a toy was at my feet, sitting next to an expectant puppy. Oh, if only I had had my camera! It was classic!

What do you do when you're torn between giving attention to your husband and your puppy? It's not a fair place to put a woman in, that's for sure.

You know who else is a jealous pup? This guy:

(See what I did there? That's called a segue people.)

This would be Rex, or Reindeer Rex to be specific. And his tag is showing! How embarrassing! Just pretend you don't see it, will you? Anyway, I think I mentioned it, but when we were staying on Rex's turf over Christmas, it was pretty much on par of what we experienced their last visit. Namely, Theo strutting around like he owned the place, and Rex biding his time and being more methodical on the best things to do to really piss Theo off, while maintaining his exterior cool. I gotta say, that's one sneaky dog.

Mostly he just stole Theo's toys a lot. Only the ones Theo wanted to play fetch with, and only after I had thrown it for Theo. And he wouldn't want to play fetch too. He would just steal the toy and go sit on it for awhile. And Theo's ears would fall and he would go pout in the corner. It was so sad, but kind of deserved after Theo did things like growling every time Rex came near me. One morning I made the mistake of letting Theo out of his crate before Rex. Rex was so excited to be let out, he kept charging the door. Even though Theo totally does the same thing, he viewed Rex's actions as a hostile attack against me, so when I finally got the door open, Theo ran in and tried to take a swipe at Rex. Ok, no swiping was involved, but lots of ferocious growling and teeth baring was. Eep! No dogs were hurt in the making of this Christmas. Theo is all talk, and Rex is all mellowness, thank goodness! But man! Juggling those two was like juggling warring toddlers. Seriously!

Also, Theo's arrival prompted nothing but polite behavior from Rex...except the part where he marked his own house! Yup! We were all just hanging out, and Rex ever so calmly walked over to the couch, sniffed it, and peed! I was just glad it wasn't Theo, which sounds terrible, but really Theo knows better than to mark inside, and I would have been mortified. Thankfully it was just that one incident.

I think my favorite, ok not favorite, but most entertaining bout between the two troublemakers was when I was laying on the couch reading. Theo jumped up and fell asleep in the crook of my legs, with his head on my knees, as he tends to do once every blue moon. Rex slowly approached, looking for some love and attention from me (I love him so!), I looked at Theo, knowing he would never allow it. Sure enough, while Theo was totally silent, I could see his nose wrinkling where he was baring his teeth to poor Rex, who took the hint and walked away.

I think both of them deserved timeout time in the reindeer antlers, don't you?

No Rain Ain't Gettin' Ma Doggy Down

Ack....arg...ughcchhk...

...there! I finally was able to post a picture on this dang thing! Let's hear it for the biggest accomplishment so far for 2010!

That yellow monster eating my puppy's head is his new raincoat! Err, at least it was new a month ago when we received it from my ever-thoughtful sister. But let's just pretend I just opened it and immediate ran to the computer to blog about how much I love it. How awesome is she to think of her "puppy nephew", as she calls him, and include him in her holiday well wishing? Not only that, she got major points for taking note of when I said Theo had outgrown his old winter jacket. What, with all the crazy rain we got a few weeks ago it was truly a life saver. Seriously, the rain was insane! People actually started building arks. Children living 20 miles inland were getting swept out to sea from the safe slumber of their beds. I may have seen a Kraken tentacle or two poke out of the not-as-dried-up-anymore dried up lake by my house.

Ok really, I was out of town nephew-sitting the cutest baby with the most pinchable cheeks and the sweetest smile that was ever born*. But Husband totally used the raincoat, I am told. So far I've only tortured Theo with it from the safety of our own home, but I can already tell that it's a keeper. Here's what I like about it.

First, it's bright yellow, as all fashionable raincoats should be if they can possibly help it.

Second, it's long enough to cover most of his bummy bum bum. This is a very important feature, and one that is often hard to come by. Corgis are, after all, not the body type norm for canine clothing. Unfortunately, neither am I the norm for homo sapien clothing, so I feel like we totally relate to each other on that one.

Third, it has a very large hood, all the better to cover his huge satellite dish ears with! The last jacket had a hood, but it was so small that I had to crush poor Theo's ears to get his head in it, making it kind of impractical to use. This one, while still bothersome to Theo, is also completely usable, which is important, since it's the raindrops on his head that he really can't stand.

Fourth, it has a good amount of fabric on the bottom, so his tummy stays relatively dry while he traipses through lawns and bushes to send pee mail to all his buddies. And it attaches to the top portion by a long easy strip of velcro, making it immensely easy to get on and off. When you have a dog that hates getting in it, and can't wait to get out of it, this is essential.

And finally (aka, fifth), it has purely decorative ducky buttons! And ducky lining! Big points for fashionability here. Also, I just decided fashionability is a word. Use it.

Husband and I discovered the entertainment value that comes with dressing Theo up in all sorts of getups and then playing fetch with him while he's wearing them. As you know, Theo is a serious fetch player. It's not just his job, it's his passion. So he doesn't let pesky things like booties on his feet or over-sized raincoats stand in his way. I say over-sized because originally the raincoat we received was a size too small. I was kind of an idiot at the store and rather than buying one size up, I bought too. Of course, I got home and discovered it was too big. But after the second trip, we got the raincoat that was just right. Anyway, Goldilocks was slipping and sliding all over the place in the raincoat he was swimming in, and it was hilarious!

I admit it. I'm a sadist. I get great enjoyment out of my dog's suffering. But really, it's only so laugh-so-hard-I-cry funny because he doesn't acknowledge that he's wearing anything hindering! He doesn't give me a pathetic look that says "Mommy, I could play fetch so much better without this thing on me!" Nope. He only has (very intense) eyes for his tribble, and when and where I throw it. If he was bothered by the slipping and sliding you would never know it because he would figure out a way to get the toy and get it back to me and was only concerned with when I would throw it again. Comedy!

In closing, my dog is awesome, hilarious, focused. He has "calmed down quite a bit", as people tell me, but really he just tends to pouting. But that's another post.

*God help the next kid born to my sister if s/he does not have enormously pinchable cheeks. I'll sigh and tell the kid "you know, I love you ok...you know, well enough. But man, your older brother is just so darn cute and lovable. I just adore him. I won't lie, it's the cheeks." What can I say? My family gatherings are not for the faint of spirit. Also, apparently "pinchable" isn't really a word and blogger thinks "punchable" is actually what I'm trying to say. Oh man it would be hilarious to see people's facing if I went around describing my nephew as having punchable cheeks.