As always Dougal (and the cats) woke us up at the butt-crack of dawn with their demands of food and potty. We did cheat and fed all of them and let Dougal go relive himself, but then crashed back into the bed for "just a few more minutes". Really how hard is it for these animals to understand it was Saturday?!? The "few more minutes" was not long enough for us and too long for Dougal "The morning pain", so he and I headed out to our morning exercise. No rest for the wicked, right? After about an hour of chase and frisbee "she who must be obeyed" called to see where we were at. Time to go...
After rearranging the car so to fit a baby seat and allow Dougal some room we headed up to our normal breakfast haunt. Well, our niece was the star of Darrel's Diner! I have to admit I had a blast listening and talking to the little crotch goblin. While I doubt I would admit to it I really miss having little ones running around wanting to know "why?" about everything.
For Dougal, Darrels is old hat for him, but this time there was an added obstacle for him, my niece! As I have talked about before, Dougal loves kids and is truly infatuated with them. Nothing bad as far as the actions he just wants to meet and lick all of them. While at the diner there was only one time where he really broke his "tuck" and that was when Niece decided she had to go to the bathroom, Dougal just knew he had to go with her, but that was easily corrected.
After breakfast, we loaded back up to head to The Walmart. Spoil time was starting. As Niece and her family are leaving tomorrow and we will not see them at Christmas why not let her pick out something she wants for Christmas while she was with us? I wanted to get something loud and obnoxious to make her parent happy, but my wife refused my wants.
Dougal was doing very well while we were in the Walmart until my Niece decided to start imitating a badly tuned motorboat. Unfortunately, I didn't see the precursor in time, Dougal barked at my niece. Of course, I corrected him on the spot and he only barked once. Well, she started again, this time I noticed the ears perked up and focus on my Neice. Correction time again and walked him away from the situation. We asked my Neice not to make that sound and we had no other problems, Dougal went back to the great SD he is.
Thinking about the situation I remembered that he does not like sounds like that and will bark when the wife and I are goofing off "zerberting" one another. So I have to find a way to socialize him to that sound and I have to do it pretty quickly as we are all planning a trip to Disney in a few weeks. The kids I think we are ready for but how many will be pretending to be motorboats?
