The Dog With the Bowling Ball Butt: The Tale of...

As VISA makes it's debut this morning on the stock market as the biggest IPO ever, I'm inclined to write something to acknowledge the sound of boo-coo-bucks jumping the wires to pay for trades.

Technically I know nothing about stocks. I buy them like I buy wine. I buy wine at times if I like the pictures on the bottles. Other times, I read reviews and figure 100 experts couldn't be wrong so I get a bottle, bring it home, try it and see how it goes. That's about as certain as life gets sometimes.

And, All I know for certain this morning? is that the coffee pot hasn't beeped at me yet and my contacts are blurry.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, there's this little matter of the dog with the bowling ball butt.

I own a dog with a bowling ball butt. I take that back, she was given to me in Trust via my mother's estate. Her name is Suzie.

She looks fine from the front, but when she walks away, it looks as if she's had a bowling ball surgically inserted into her behind.

The dog with the bowling ball butt has apparently had a whim and decided to wake up this morning. She has bankers hours, or something. She conks out every evening at 9:00 PM and sleeps in until she's ready to get up.

There are times during the day that no one can touch our front steps without her alerting everyone in the house. Her feet are dainty in spite of the huge imposing bulge she carries around and they make a sweet clickety, clickety, sound as she comes running to tell me "Woof! Woof-Woof!! Someone's at my door human. Take care of it." Her job done, she then retreats to let me face the danger at the front door on my own.

But if she's taking a nap under the pillow on the sofa during the day or otherwise disposed? a bomb could go off on the front porch and she wouldn't hear it. In other words? She's only worth her salt as a guard dog when she's wide awake...and that isn't often.

Since Suzie arrived, she's appointed herself her personal sleep dominion underneath the night stand on my side of the bed. After she plops on her night-night pillow, she must not be disturbed.

My slippers must not get too close to her pillow when I take them off or she comes unglued. I musn't rustle any magazines or books I might be reading on top of my nightstand either as she's a light sleeper and gets disturbed very easily.

Suzies arrival completed my quest to sleep in Stero-phonic snoring. My husband to the right, Jack Jack the cat above and behind me, and Suzie to the left on the floor. To avoid going crazy I've convinced myself this is not really snoring, but is instead?

Waves hitting the edges of a sail boat from all different angles. The game I play when I go to sleep is that I'm stranded on a sail boat in a very calm bay and it's just the waves whistling and slapping gently against the boat's hull that I'm hearing. I even sleep with the ceiling fan turned on 365 day a year to get the breezy effect to go along with it.

I'm very lucky no one who sleeps with me is one of those energetic honking snorting types of snorers. I don't think I could pretend to be caught in a hurricane in a sail boat and still drift off to sleep. After a good night's sleep,

Every morning it's the same thing with Suzie the Bowling Butt Dog. She snuffles and does this weird nose swiping thing on her dog bed, stretches, then leaps ten feet across the bedroom and out to the kitchen area.

Clickety, clickety, Clickety, STOP. Sniff. Snuffle. Clickety, Clickety Clickety, Stop. Look up at owner. "Woof - where's my treat for waking up this morning? Woof, Woof - hey you, up there on the bar stool typing away. I said, WHERE's MY TREAT FOR WAKING UP???"

I look down at the Bowling Ball Butt dog and tell her 'No Treat Suzie' and then I feed her. I'm convinced my hold out and stubborn streak will work on her. I feed her Dog food, not real food. I put it into a dog food bowl, not a human bowl, on the floor in the kitchen.

Then she goes into the kitchen and sits by her breakfast bowl and stares at me as if I've completely missed something. She's a Westie, and this morning I swear her ears and head and expresion all add up to tell me, "you don't really think I'm going to eat this do you?"

So I quit looking over there. It's weird for her to stare at me, so I play the game my cat's play. "If I don't look at you, you aren't there."

I last a grand total of 30 minutes then go to the pantry, get a handfull of the SAME dog food I just put into her bowl and ask her if she wants a treat.

OH MY GOD. TREAT! Treat! Treat!!!

She gets all excited and dances around and then sits on the floor by my bar stool as I PIECE BY PIECE, toss her the SAME exact food that's sitting in her food bowl, now masquerading as a treat.

She catches her morsel, runs over to the most expensive rug I own, drops it, bites it in half, gobbles it up, hoovers up the crumbs, then comes back to my feet to "Woof" for more. This is how my mother did it and I realize Suzie came to me perfectly trained and that I have been the one who's slow on the uptake.

There are about 25 pieces of kibble in a half cup of Suzies dog food.

Lucky Me. If there's only one thing I can be certain about? It's that I have about 25 chances of getting it right.

Eventually.