and I’m in trouble.
First off, let me say that it wasn’t my fault; not entirely, anyway.
I am eight months old and am pretty big for my age. I came to live with these great people on this big farm with lots of space to run, other dogs to play with, or sometimes run from, depending on their mood, and a bunch of other people coming in and out at all hours.
Oh, and goats.
And a pond.
It’s a really great place to live and I’m learning things like how to sit when I’m told and to stay when I’m told. I bark at leaves and wind and really get excited when that big brown truck full of boxes comes around.
I really like it here.
Apparently this time of year is special because lots of people have come by with very loud sticks that they take into the woods and them come back out, sometimes with only the loud stick, but sometimes with a thing I’ve heard them call a “deer” or a “buck”. They talk about “bagging one” but so far, I haven’t seen any bags, although I don’t know what a bag is or what it looks like.
The things that came out of whatever they bagged are what got me in trouble, but I reiterate that it wasn’t entirely my fault.
I distinctly heard one of my favorites of my new people tell the ones who appear to be the Alphas of the place that I was a thinker and problem solver. I don’t think they believed her.
As it happens, I am both of those things and because of it, I found myself in a unique situation.
There is a lot of work that goes into doing whatever they do to the things that are bagged without bags and it seems that some parts are more important than others.
I, along with my new dog pals Moe, Molly and Blue (he’s the one that scares me a bit, but he doesn’t know how big I’ll grow, hehehe), sometimes get to take part in the ritual that follows the bagging by being thrown pieces of what they take out of it.
It’s pretty good stuff, I’ll have to say. I have not been disappointed, though I did get some red stuff on me and my favorite person fussed over me like I was hurt or something. I don’t know what all that was about, but I loved the attention and the delicious cookies she gave me after.
I’ve gotten a little off point of talking about my trouble, but here is the thing … those reddish looking pieces of something were just hanging there in what the baggers with the loud sticks called the shed and they smelled really good.
I have a keen nose and was, naturally, quite interested.
They were pretty high up, too high for me to reach even standing on my hind legs and stretching; and I can stretch a long way. I noticed a contraption of some kind under them and as I looked at it and looked at the hanging things, I began to formulate a plan.
Since some stuff the humans took in the house and other stuff they threw to me and my pals, I figured that whatever was hanging out of our reach must be pretty darn good.
I paced a bit, back and forth around the shed and kept coming back to the contraption that I’d seen them ride in.
After a bit of consideration, I realized that I was big enough and strong enough to climb into the back of that contraption which would make me much taller than my already fairly tall self.
So I went for it. After getting in the back of the contraption, I was able to rare up and get my powerful jaws around one of those things hanging in the shed.
It was like nothing I’d ever tasted. I was so excited that I went back and ate them all.
As it turned out, I learned a bit later, they were “deer hams” and something the humans prize very highly when they bag one of those critters with their noisy sticks.
They were pretty angry. I learned that word that day. I also learned “unhappy”, “bad dog”, “for the love of God”, and some others I can’t pronounce and judging from the faces that the words came from, I probably shouldn’t repeat them anyway.
I can’t promise that I won’t do it again because they were
SO.
VERY.
GOOD.
I’m hoping they will hang more of them, but my fear is that they have learned a valuable lesson about my prowess, intelligence and problem solving super powers.
See, as it turns out, it wasn’t even remotely my fault because number one, I can’t drive and didn’t park that contraption under the prized parts and number two, at the time I didn’t know any better.
I know better now, but boy howdy, those things were delicious and hope springs eternal.
A Photographer's Heart 