Eating Chocolate

Aha!  Fiorella has figured something out. She is a stress eater, just like Sonia Dog.

Whenever Fio takes the leash off its hooks, Sonia gets excited and runs to her feeding station and starts gobbling down food and lapping up water like it's going out of style.  And whenever Fiorella is excited, or angry, or distressed, she picks up an extra treat at the grocery store or turns out the cupboards and refrigerator for something soothing to eat--preferably chocolate, but anything will do.

But grabbing for the Dove bar never really solves any problems.  Maybe it's that Fiorella isn't eating enough of them.

Sonia Grows Up

Fio walked Sonia Dog twice around the driveway with four deer grazing in the middle of it.  All it took was a stick and a half of PupPeroni and Fiorella's hand under doggie's collar.  Somewhere along the way, Sonia realized that the treat was guaranteed, but she'd never yet caught a deer.

Maybe it's adult maturity setting in,  After all, Sonia will turn twenty-one in dog years next month so she'll be putting all that teen-age nonsense behind her.  She isn't as interested in rawhide bones as she used to be, and she gets querulous if we stay up past her bedtime.

But she's still our sweet baby Sonia.

Popcorn!

The new popcorn popper arrived yesterday.  Fiorella and Husband hadn't been able to indulge in their usual Saturday night sit-on-the-couch-and-eat-popcorn-together fest for about a month, ever since the plastic dome on top of their old popper cracked, but Fio found an identical machine on line and it is now sitting in glory on her kitchen island.

Mmm-mmm!  Nothing like sharing a plastic dome full of popcorn with your sweetie on Saturday night!

Secret Ingrediant

Sonya Dog is hard to wake up in the mornings.  She lies in her crate for several minutes after it's been opened and tries to catch a few last minutes of rest until finally, at Fio's urging, she stretches her long body and staggers to her feet.  Fio lures her out of the crate and into the hall with slivers of what she and husband refer to as dog crack, but, at the top of the stairs, Sonya balks.  She's too big a dog to be comfortable with stairs, especially when she has to go down them, and especially when she's just awakened and is so uncoordinated that she's stumbling over her own paws.

Fio often walks her down the stairs by standing in front of her so she can't see the drop to the first floor, but Sonya wasn't buying it this morning so Fio left her sitting on the landing and placed a larger piece of treat at the bottom of the steps.  After a minute or so of contemplation, Sonya carefully navigated her way down and snatched up her reward.

Which makes you wonder--what the heck is in that dog treat?