Skills

When we adopted our first puppy, we were fresh off the bandwagon of Nintendogs and found it quite amusing to teach the little guy all sorts of tricks; even the simple ones like stay, so when the time came to start training the second in command we found ourselves less enticed. This was particularly so when we discovered how easily she copied the first one. "Let him teach her," we pronounced. On the whole, the pack training of two worked well, but there are a few things she hasn't quite mastered. One of those is getting into the plastic spoons. As soon as I throw away the current one she's demolished, she trots over and finds a new one. I should move them, yes.

Today we were working on stay. I was watering the plants out front; she was perched on the front steps where she was told to watch - but stay put! Easy enough, until some hobo walks by and tells her she no longer has to stay. Usually my puppies do what they are told and bark crazily at anyone old, drunk, or unclean. I guess we've now found something else we need to spend time working on.

Once I reach the two of them, and put the puppy back in her place, the hobo says to me, "I can tell they really love you."

"Really? That's nice."

"You know how I can tell?"

"Uh uh."

"It's the look in your eyes..." he follows up with a smile and points to his own eyes fearing that I won't understand.

No, that's just the look of someone who thinks you are a crazy drunk!

Now that he's blathered on about his psychic abilities, he's got a story to tell. "Today, I got a wild squirrel to eat out of my hand for 5 minutes!!"

"That's lucky," I surmised.

"No," he corrected me. "That's 'cuz I got skills."