Squirrel Crazy!

Our dog pepper thinks that she is a mighty tracker. When she goes outside her nose goes directly into the grass and she follows invisible trails all over our backyard. She can sit as still as a statue on our bed looking out the window for hours, waiting for some hapless creature to wander into her domain; just so she can bark menacingly at it.

One summer we had a few doves visit our yard on a regular basis. Now, I personally think doves are some of the most stupid animals on earth and here is why. These doves would come and land on the grass in our yard and just kind of stand around. Pepper would see them out the window and whine and cry like a puppy possessed until we let her outside. Then Pepper would run at top speed, barking at the top of her lungs aaaaaall the way around 2 sides of the house until she got to the side of the yard where the dove was. All this time the dove is just standing in the grass kind of looking around thinking little dovey thoughts like maybe "hey, I wonder where all that barking is coming from, oh, look a dog coming straight at me...hmmm..." So Pepper is coming at top speed at this dove which is just chillin in the grass and she gets all the way up to it barking like a ferocious beast and the dove doesn't fly off, it just stands there! Well Pepper has never caught anything in her life, so she gets about 6 inches away from it and stops, and looks at the dove like "uhh...psst...Mr. Dove, now is the part where you fly away..." So Pepper and the dove stand there looking at each other for a full 10 or 15 seconds before the dove finally realizes, "OH NO! It's a dog" and flies away.

So keep that in mind while I tell you about the squirrels. This time of year the squirrels are going crazy collecting food for the winter, and they run accross our back fence all the time, so when Pepper sees one, she runs crazy back and forth in front of the window crying and barking to be let out, if we dont let her out she hops up on her back legs and stares out the window. Well as you can imagne all this is absolutely facinating for Kaiya, who now loves to look for squirrels too! We keep the curtains in her room open alot and she will look out there and if she sees one she shouts "Squirrel!!!" (Which actually sounds more like "skirls"). Well now she and Pepper have joined together in the great squirrel hunt and now when Kaiya yells squirrel, Pepper comes running!


By the way, this is the closest Pepper ever gets to Kaiya of her own volition.