Double burn!

As some of you may know, our Buddy is a mighty hunter of squirrels. We learned that the hard way when we first got him and in order to spare our little furry friends only let him "hunt" on leash these days. You may also know that our little Buddy is a canus carborhydratus, or what is commonly known as a carb hound. Bread, pretzels, bagels, chips. If it's starchy and white, he's all over it. He'll take multi-grain and whole wheat too, but he won't be as happy about it. This often raises some challenges in the park. There are many people who like to leave bread in the park for the pidgeons and squirrels and geese and ducks and mice and whoever else is living there. Which is nice in theory until you can't find anyplace to lay down a picnic blanket for all the goose shit on the ground. And then they try to steal your lunch.

Anyway, given these facts about Buddy, you will sympathize his recent plight in the park. We were stalking squirrels when all of the sudden Buddy spotted one in the distance, a black squirrel at the foot of the tree eating a hunk of french bread that some kindly visitor had left out. Buddy started straight for him and I thought, "Oh it will be cute. He'll chase the sqiurrel up the tree and then he'll get to eat the bread and it will kind of be like he caught and killed his prey but without the killing and the blood and the illegalness." Imagine my surprise when the squirrel ran up the tree with the hunk of bread the size of his body. He then sat on a branch looking casually down at us, munching his bread.

More surprising still was that Buddy didn't seem to care. I thought the double burn of missing out on both squirrel and bread would send him into a frenzy of barking and whining and jumping about but instead he sat calmly, watching, for a few minutes and then moved on. I don't know whether it was all too much for him to handle or if he was thinking "That's right, get nice and fat, I'll be back next week...." I'd like to think it was the latter but Buddy hasn't given too many signs of being much of a mastermind. If we try to play with him by tossing a bedsheet over him, he can't even figure out how to get out from under it. He'll just struggle for a minute and then lay down and wait for us to take it off. It's a good thing he's pretty.