been a while.

It's been such a time since my last visit.... and I'm sorry for that. I know how the masses yearn for my ramblous writings (ramboulous? Surely that's a word). But our busy and boisterous lives have forced spare time and writing to take a back seat. And while shoved into that back seat, much yelling and screaming and begging for attention ensued. So I am giving in and putting pen to paper. Or cursor to screen. Whatever. So much has happened in the last few months, that surely I can manage a somewhat entertaining masterpiece of words that will keep you at least mildly amused.

We celebrated Bailey's 6th birthday with cake and such and he is aging gracefully. Judge is no longer the small and fluffy baby he was in January, and spring saw a pretty helacious growth spurt followed by a first haircut (given to him by yours truly). I chased him around the back porch with a pair of clippers, crying as I sheered off those beautiful baby curls. He was somewhat terrified, and somewhat amused. He wasn't quite sure if it was playtime of if he had done something that deserved my strange behavior.  I know, it's ridiculous. But you folks have your babies with their spit up and dirty diapers, and I have my dogs.

First haircuts are a big deal in both cases. But if I thought I was losing my cuddly baby puppy, I was kinda wrong. Turns out, giant puppies love to cuddle to. Now it just hurts a little. I sport very attractive greenish blue bruises pretty much all the time from the neck down. They just don't make couches big enough for two full grown adults and one full grown Doodle. To sit comfortably on at least and Judge prefers to use us as extra padding. He's somewhat catlike in the way he prefers to lounge across the back cushions. It's a bit weird, but we love him so we allow it.

Bailey is as calm and collected as ever. Being the mature older brother suits him more than well and he is quite the role model. Most of the time. We did come home to a pretty serious situation a few weeks ago. A situation that involved my love seat and a broken window.  Darling and I decided that maybe Judge was ready to be left out of the kennel for an hour or so. Bailey isn't kenneled because, well, he doesn't need to be. He's the perfect specimen of a house dog, and goes straight to our bed when we leave and stays there for most of our absence. Judge is odd and who knows what he does. He is fond of a particular ostrich move where he hides his head between the cushions and pretends you can't see him. We can see him, but it's funny so we don't tell him that. Judge decided to ostrich for a while in our front room during one of his free range sessions and discovered that there are zippers on our couch cushions. Zippers that contain treasure like no other. Treasure in the form of foam padding. Padding that must taste delightful because when we got home, it was everywhere. Everywhere. In large drifts all across the front room. I followed this trail of couch murder into our living room, and found not only more foam padding, but a broken window pain. What the hell. Who actually knows what went on during the brief hour we were away. Truthfully, we'll never know. But one can hazard a guess that Bailey stood by, innocent in all counts, and watched the madness unfold. I was a little disappointed that he didn't step in. I expected him to step in. But instead, he just stared up at us with his sweet innocent eyes and we knew he took no part in this atrocity. In all fairness, there was no real damage at all to the love seat. Everything was stuffed back into its rightful place and you would never know that our dog lost his mind for a fleeting hour. But lesson learned on our part. Free range will come later. Much later. 

This is the face of a crazy, enourmous, wild animal. This is 7 1/2 month old Judge.