Do They Ever Listen?

Sometimes, despite not having children, I feel called upon to act as someone's mother. And believe me, this is not a role I feel comfortable with. I find myself saying things like, "It's for your own good!" or "Why are you doing this? You're making me very unhappy!" The "children" I am referring are the four-footed kind: Maggie and Robin. Mostly, my pleas for good behavior fall upon deaf ears.
  Occasionally, I am forced to reprimand Maggie the Mexican Pony. (It comes with having a 900 pound pet; you cannot allow her to bite, kick or otherwise attempt to intimidate you- especially when you're trying to do something good like pick out her hooves.)  I may growl at Maggie or sharply rebuke her. (No, I am not beating her about the ears with a stick, but I push her off firmly or snap her lead line). The punchline here is that Robin the Good finds this entertaining. She sits on the other side of the fence and laughs tauntingly. There is a bit of sibling rivalry between the two critters...

And as most of you know, I rarely get mad at Lil' Robin - like maybe three and a half times in the past two years. She is a very good dog. But the other day proved the exception to the rule.
The blacksmith came to trim Maggie's feet. Typically, he does this out by the barn but on Thursday I thought to bring Maggie up on the lawn so she could graze a bit and there are fewer gates for him to carry his tools through. Maggie stood fine, despite a strong wind and in short order her hooves looked nice and smooth and attended to. (Next time, maybe she'll opt for a pretty French tip!)

 

I decided to go in the house to wash my hands and eat lunch before cleaning up the lawn. Big mistake! As I opened the door Robin bolted out (offense #1), shoving me out of the way as she hurtled straight to where the horse's feet had been trimmed and (offense #2) immediately scarfed down a luscious selection of hoof parings.
This is beyond gross. Hoof parings are like big nasty old dirty toenails. And they're sharp! No matter how clean you keep your horse's pasture, they stand around on poop and mud and all kinds of bacteria and they stink. Needless to say, is truly delicious to dogs.
I was frantically crawling around on hands and knees, fishing for bits and chunks and thought I had gotten them all. And I kept ordering Robin to go play some place else. I threw the balls, I waved attractive sticks in the air... and she still kept returning to the hoof trimmings. It got ridiculous; I had told her seventy three times to "Get away from there!!!" in my sternest voice. She earned a new nickname: "Sneakus" because every time I turned around she had snuck back over to snorfle around. I finally took a tarp and some rocks and covered the area. One of the funnier moments was when I glanced back to see Maggie at the fence line, visibly laughing at Robin (for a change) as if to say, "Nyah, nyah, nyah! Rita NEVER yells at you!! How's it feel now?!?!?"

The morning after, I can't find Robin and I go downstairs and she's seated at that door and I detect that familiar shoulder hunch and gak gak gak sound like she's starting to throw up... so out the door she goes, barely clears the terrace before  ejecting a foamy mess. And sure enough! It's got a ripe chunk of hoof in it, which I snatched up in my (gloved) hand and threw far over the fence. (Gloves are in the laundry.) Do they ever listen to me? I told her she'd get sick!

Combination Holiday

We celebrated a truly combined holiday yesterday. As not all family celebrants were able to attend on actual Easter, we celebrated a day earlier; which made for a combination Passover/Easter/April Fool's Day and Beatrice's Birthday. Such modern, multi-tasking holiday types are we.
There were many eggs presented, all lovely. Beatrice and John contributed the above selection of glamorous pastel saturated hues. Cathy made a basket of dyed eggs, too- some alluringly dark and mysterious; I believe she alluded to one as being a hundred year old egg. I ate that one at lunch.

As  this was the first Easter/Multiplex holiday that we were observing since Mommy passed away, I had thought to honor her memory with setting an elegant table with the good silverware and formal dishes. But when I opened the silver box, it smelled moldy, and even worse was the fact that the actual silver smelled and no amount of washing seemed to remove it. So we resorted to everyday forks, knives and spoons. The food tasted just fine.
And food! There was food aplenty! Scalloped potatoes and asparagus with confetti and pork cooked in the crock pot and Key Lime Pie and wine and beer. One of my favorite moments of the day came when we left the great outdoors, where we had been enjoying the sun and spring-like weather and everyone was hungry and the house was heavy with the scent of heavenly roasting pork and John exclaimed, "PORK!" I think he summed up what we all were anticipating.

I had decorated for the multiple holiday festivities and it did turn out to be a colorful event, what with all the eggs and the centerpiece, which featured a strange bird sculpture that had once been at Mommy's house. (Mommy was present in a few ways at Easter; I guess you can't help but miss someone who hosted holidays for so many years.)

My other favorite moment was when we were all still outside, prior to eating, and Beatrice was spontaneously playing soccer with Robin. I really encourage Beatrice and John to get a dog; well, not just any dog. They should put in for one of Robin's puppies which we are now planning for next year, as this year is already too hectic. (I'll need to arrange "maternity leave" from work to help handle the delivery and nursery duties!)
And speaking of Robin, she had quite a morning. I got up early and made coffee and was on the computer checking emails when I realized that Lil Robin was not laying under the computer table (and on my left foot) and it seemed awfully quiet. I went looking for her down stairs and found her contemplating two piles of her own vomit. (Fortunately, she's not like some dogs who eat their own puke...) She seemed just fine soon after but I think she overdid the cleaning of plates and consuming of odd bits at Easter dinner. Too much excitement!

More egg shots! These were the leftovers, three of which made a delicious egg salad sandwich for our lunch today. I especially liked that two tone pastel purplish and blue on in the center. I didn't want to crack that shell as it was so pretty!