Sophie the Wonder Dog

The people next door moved out and are trying to find a place for their dog, Jasmine. When I think of a dog called Jasmine, I always think of April's lab that ate (and later passed) my purple Scooby socks. So I call her Sophie instead. She doesn't seem to mind as long as I keep giving her dog biscuits. Since the people next door have moved out, I've been keeping an eye on her, playing with her, putting her back on her lead when she manages to get off, refilling her water dish 5 times a day because she likes to dump it out. Maybe she wants to wear the bowl on her head or something when no one is looking. I haven't quite figured that out yet. But she is digging trenches, so maybe there's a WWI reenactment in the works.

In any case, she's pretty big. She comes up to my knees at least, but she's still a puppy. She is also somewhat bewildering. I've known a lot of cats. They pretty much keep to themselves, they are self cleaning. They sometimes eat things I don't think they'll eat (cleo likes my sunflower peanut butter substitute with a passion.) She also likes anything sweet even though cats don't like sweet food. But at least she eats food. Sophie the wonder dog demolishes everything. Today she took out two bags of very innocent dirt. When she found the half full bags where I had stashed them under the porch, I decided to nip this in the bud and take the dirt and dump it in my flower bed across the yard. As I was dragging the bag, I noticed it started getting a lot heavier. Sophie had her mouth clamped down and was being dragged along with the bag. All I can say is that half the dirt ended up in the bed. The rest ended up on Sophie and in the yard. I just let her have the bag, which was apparently her original goal. She tried to eat some of the dirt, but found that distasteful.

Dogs are apparently not self cleaning. This is a big difference with cats. I kept expecting her to do something to get the pile of dirt off her, but nope, she seemed to like it. She also demolished a pool net, her toy rope frisbee, a pile of leaves, and she started in on a rake before I confiscated it. And my hair. Apparently, it's a doggie delicacy.

So here I am after an afternoon of playing with Sophie. I can't hear well out of my left ear because it is full of dog slobber. I'm dirty. And tired. And a little sore from throwing the ball. The cats are looking at me weird. Sammy keeps trying to clean the dog smell off of me with this grimace on her face. I can tell that they are wondering if I've gone to the other side and become a dog person. I don't know quite what to tell her. Maybe it's possible to be a cat and a dog person at the same time.