Chickeny bone!

Days of rain, little explosions of high winds, tornado warnings (unclear whether any actually touched down), floods, feet of snow up north, highways closed, streets closed, power outages. We chose to hunker down, wide-eyed. Most of "Gray's Anatomy" was lost, and I finished another A. S. Byatt novel.

The poor dog seems never to have experienced rain. On the screened-in back porch by the doggie door, she looked out, then at me, squatted and peed inside with a look that said her decision was logical and surely... I shoved her out into the rain! She didn't die out there but finished peeing. I praised her like she'd mastered calculus, rewarded her with a treat, and she glowed with joy and ridiculously elevated self esteem. The pee-pee war continues.

This was back-to-school week, and Lady is coping with separation anxiety once again. I brought home a bag full of treats and chewy things, including two very expensive rawhide "bones" making dental health claims and incorporating a layer of "chicken." I put it in quotes because the color is strange and I have no idea what was done to it since it was a bird. When the first one disappeared unusually quickly, I thought, oh, gee, she chewed it all up in one day? Must be good. Then we had a sunny spell. I sat outside reading while Lady carried the prized and clearly too-precious-to-chew second chickeny bone around burying it, digging it up, burying it somewhere else, digging it up, etc. I was so excited I went in to get the camera. I had never seen this before except in cartoons! Slapping forehead, previous brown nose observations and dried mud on sofa suddenly make sense! On the other hand, I swear to never again spend $7.99 on a rawhide chickeny bone. Yesterday one mud-caked chickeny bone reappeared on a doggie bed in the living room. I confiscated it for a wash and dry.