Lost arts...

My nemesis is getting skinnier and skinnier...but he just won't go away. In the top left photo, you can see him fleeing my wrath after having squeezed his loathsome body between the side gate and the fence.  Chicken.  In the top right, you can see him sitting at the edge of my neighbor's house, taunting me.  There he will stay until I go back to Inside.  No matter how long I glare at him from my side of the house, he will remain.  The rat.

My puppy momma has told me, again and again, that I should learn the art of compromise or sharing or both.  Myrtle says they are lost arts.  I don't know about that.  I find nothing artful about having Fearsome Beast living in MY backyard and taunting me in the process.  Myrtle says I should feel sorry for him, because while I have gotten a tad...plump...he has shrunk in size over the winter.  She has worried that he will die.  Me?  Well, honestly, I would say, "Good riddance!" were that to happen.

But despite her confusing and somewhat treasonous stance on my nemesis, Myrtle does love me.  Truly she does.

Today, she bought me my own Baby Bunny, complete with a squeaker!

Now, this bunny is down right ugly.  And already I do not have the same love and affection I have for all my Babies.  Instead, I have found it a perfect object of all my ire and wrath and frustration over Fearsome Beast.

Already, I have ripped his whiskers off and damaged his tail.  I eaten one of his eyes.  And I am thinking that his ears might make a good snack, too.

I shall not tuck him into bed with all my other babies.
I shall not snuggle with him.
I shall not carry him about to keep him company.
I shall not love him.

This bunny shall be no Baby of mine.  I shall be making short work of him.

Too bad Myrtle won't let me get my paws on the real thing.  Maybe...just maybe...after seeing me pour my righteous wrath out upon this bunny, she will relent about continuing to allow the miscreant interloper to live in our back yard.  Maybe she will cover up the hole to his home beneath the back porch and dig up every single speck of greenery, so that, if Fearsome Beast chooses to continue to live in stubborn defiance of my rightful reign, he will die a horrible death of starvation.

This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off!

The grand experiment...

Myrtle has announced that we are beginning The Grand Experiment.  The dining room is now open for business...just still not my business!

You see, when I was but a little pup, my favorite indoor place to do outdoor activities was the dining room.  After umpteen thousand accidents, in a fit of pique, Myrtle closed the pocket French doors and set up a baby gate between the dining room and kitchen.  I was shut out.  Completely. I believe this move was rash and rather unfair.  I also believe that Myrtle should long have been practicing far more forgiveness than she has in this matter.

Well, I have kept up an unrelenting campaign ever since our canine visitor departed for Myrtle to allow me entrance to this most wondrous of rooms.

While she was here, Seri got to spend practically all her time in the dining room.  AND her free reign was allowed to continue despite the fact that she had several accidents since, as a baby puppy, she's still learning about the proper disposition of her bodily functions.  Now, does that sound fair to you? Seri had free run of the room while I was left to make do with peering over the gate or through the lowest panes of the French doors.

I am nearly 15-months old now.  I have lived with Myrtle for over a year, absorbing all those millions upon millions of house rules.  Fairly consistently, I have proven that, unless my puppy momma is being negligent on noticing my communicative efforts regarding my bodily needs, I understand all said activity needs to take place out of doors. Therefore, I believe it is high time that I be given access to the dining room.  After all, there is this fantastic table around which I can run laps, there are wooden grates in the floor that allow me to peer down into the basement, and I can get from the GREEN chair to my water bowl in a fraction of the time it takes to go across the living room to the foyer, through the parlor, and then across the kitchen to where my water bowl resides.

Today, victory was achieved!  After much lecturing about trust and responsibility and how second chances do not come around all that frequently, Myrtle opened the French doors without quickly shutting them again in my face.  Yes, I, Amos Adams, am now free to spend as much time as I wish sniffing about, exercising, and taking short-cuts.

This is my life with Myrtle.  Amos Adams signing off!