Doggy Torture

The corgi, Dixie, is hilarious. She's very smart when she wants to be and she has favorite words that get her all excited. A few of these are "puppy", "ball", "cookie" and the best.. "outside".

We call our dogs puppies, even though Bear is 5 years old and Dixie is right behind him at 4. Cookies are any kind of treat or nommy goodness. Ball is ANY toy, whether it is hers, or belongs to a cat (or Tim...) and of course, outside means we're going to go OUT IN TO THE GREAT WIDE YONDER!

My favorite form of Doggy Torture is to insert any of these words into a sentence, randomly.

For example:

"Whatcha doing ball Dixie?" She looks at me, head cocked, eyes intent. She looks around for a second, then figures she misheard.

"You're such a silly outside cookie girl Dixie!" She hrrumphs, cocks her head again and begins to get excited- she KNOWS what she heard this time. She prances in place then casts around, trying to decide if running around the couch will do any good- but what does she want more? The cookie or the chance to go outside?

I tease her a few more times in this way before I deliver the final torture- "OMG DIXIE, PUPPY BALL OUTSIDE COOKIE! OUTSIDE? BALL COOKIE?" By this time, Dixie is galloping around the house like a goofball barking at the air and not sure whether to poop, die, or go blind (that's a nice little Southern saying ya'll... I'll explain the full thing in person some time.)

Usually by this time, I've laughed at her enough. I hand her a cookie and if it's been a little while since she's gone out, I will let her in to the magical outside, where she stands on the deck for a minute and looks around, then waits to be let back in.

Gotta love doggy torture!

-Kristen