smell « Behind the Willows

Yesterday my Mom and I had a chance to go pheasant hunting together and the culmination of a morning of mishaps was when I looked down and realized I had lost the transmitter to Trips shock collar.

Not good.

Not good at all.

My much loved, daily used controller that not only “reminds” Trip to pay attention to me but also controls the locating beeps his collar makes was lost in a swamp full of cattails.

This afternoon after dejectedly looking one last time at just how much a new transmitter would be I made one last effort to find it. I headed back to the cattails and dove in.

A quarter of the way in I was certain I was on my trail from yesterday and Trip was hunting just ahead of me.

A third of the way in I was pretty sure things looked familiar and Trip was somewhere… perhaps off to the left…

Half way through I found a very dead, very old, very stinky, six point buck and was abruptly certain I was no longer on my path from yesterday and I thankfully had no idea where my dog was.

Disheartened I quickly pushed through the wall of cattails away from the carcass looking for my old trail, (and the dog) but it was the beginning of the end. I was never able to pick up my path from yesterday or the transmitter. Trip, however, was not as far away as I thought. He found the deer and took matters into his own paws. Yes, my intelligent dog solved our problem with stink.

After that I didn’t need any fancy transmitter to know where Trip was – I could smell him.

Even when I couldn’t see him or hear him – I could smell him.

Not only did I know where Trip was but he solved his own problem at the same time. After Trip applied his “solution” my whistle blowing was over and my cries of “Come!” turned to “GO!” and he was allowed to range out as far as he wanted.

I’m pretty sure he thought he was all that and more after solving our problems…

… until I got him home and it was bath time!

Let me just ask you something.

Have you ever looked at a young child while eating and thought, “Hmmm, you know what would be great? If that kid comes over here and smells my food by putting their nose directly on it. Yup, that’d make this meal just about perfect.”?
No, of course you haven’t.
Because nobody wants anybodies nose on their food.
Ever.
The End.

Clara the pirate says “Arrggh Mighty!”

But…
But.
But, we have this food smelling thing going on in our house.
You know, the thing where Clara can’t eat some kinds of food so she just sweetly asks to smell them and then it breaks everyone’s heart so everyone lets her smell her food anyway even though it’s rather odd.

That thing.

Well, now she’s becoming more demanding: “I smell it with my nose on it?”

(The answer to that, in case you were wondering is- NO.)

But, there are times when Clara doesn’t ask, and my food gets nose smelled before I get a say in the matter, which makes me less than happy.

And if a certain sweet girl happens to throw a giant fit over the fact that I will not let her smell anything else with her nose on it and I catch her in the act of nose smelling another of my food items anyway – that’s when it happens: