Diggity Dog

It was a beautiful day, New Year's, after a rawther wild New Year's eve. We took the kids to a really fun party, not factoring in the reality that they'd been up until midnight the two previous nights. To shorten a long, sad story, they melted down around 11, and we celebrated the New Year as we rolled into our garage with two completely zonked kids in the back seat. It was a bit of a downer, since country folk like us rarely get out to dance and act dopey with our buddies. I wasn't good for much but the day dawned sunny and still, so my friend Shila and I went out with Chet Baker on a long lazy walk around the Loop. Chet thought this was a fine idea and darted about, smelling things we could only imagine. He stepped on an ant hill, noted the soft soil, and decided to investigate. I was quickly covered with a spray of fine soil as it flew out behind him. Having grown up with a dachshund who, over his 12-year life span excavated most of a 5-acre woodland, I found Chet's efforts amusing. He was proud of his work, though, and paused to gaze nobly around with his dirty nose, like a champion racehorse who has just come in off a muddy track. It brought back memories of old Volks, who would come staggering home after an entire Saturday's work, his eyes two wet dark spots in a mask of red Virginia soil. Being a Boston terrier, Chet has been bred not for any honest work but merely for companionship and fun, so he doesn't get too wrapped up in any one pursuit. If he has a job, it is to make us laugh, and that he takes very seriously.I took down the Christmas tree tonight. Chet lay watching me with a worried brow, hoping that I would decide to give him an ornament to chew. He filched a chipping sparrow's nest that was lined with Phoebe's red hair clippings, a prize from years back, and chewed that up while I wasn't looking. I know that sleeping right next to the Christmas tree has been a kind of torture for him, festooned as it is with things of felt, wood, and fiber, things that really beg to be chewed up. But he never bothered any of them until he saw me taking it down. I believe he thought I was throwing the ornaments out at that point (hence the worried look) and that it would probably be OK if he took just one.
Early to bed for all of us tonight. I'll check to see if I have any good images from last night, tomorrow, when I'm awake enough to download them. Until then...