This Dog. That Face.

                     

                                         

This dog. That face. It almost makes me forget what a whack-job she is. It almost makes me overlook her latest neurosis, as follows:

Back in the Spring I spent a small fortune redoing the landscaping around my house. This included the removal of two huge trees in my backyard and their replacement with a big yard full of turf, the kind that is rolled into place like carpeting. The result has been a beautiful, manicured look out back. Lucy loves the place, it is her domain. It had been our hope that by removing the trees, Lucy would grow out of her fondness for digging around their roots. The key word of that last sentence of course being "hope". There is one spot back there which is still a source of endless fascination for her, and oddly its in the exact spot where she used to dig before, near one of the old trees. There is something there that drives her to dig down just a few inches and then lick the dirt as if her life depended on it! Upon closer inspection I found a strand of dark gray, even black dirt streaked through the spot. After thirty minutes out there Lucy's tongue looks like she has eaten an entire bag of licorice.

So, being possessed of allegedly higher intellect, I decided that I would place a large decorative stone over the dreaded spot, one too heavy for her to move, whereupon, after seeing it covering her licking-hole, she merely dug around the edges of the stone and found new veins of the delicious and mysterious black gold. Now I have a dorky looking stone and an expanding hole in the ground smack dab in the middle of my beautiful manicured $10,000 dollar backyard.                                                    

    

Meanwhile, Lucy sleeps the deep, carefree sleep of the just. Grrrrrrrrr.......