Sometimes Patty and I like to refer to the dogs as “Pooch #1″ and “Pooch #2;” just to let them know who REALLY assigns the names around here. Lately, Bear has been acting a lot like #2. He was playing with a piece of string this past weekend while Patty & I looked on with resigned boredom or unbridled enthusiasm. (We’re Minnesotans and we frequently mistake the two emotions.) We turned away for exactly one minute and he actually swallowed the string. We know this because after I turned off my stopwatch, the string was gone.

Well, I had no intention of removing string from an utterly horrible location at a future time…possibly while neighbor children looked on. So we figured it was time yet again to make a dog barf. I’ve had to do this once before with Indie, but Bear is a bigger dog. I led him outside and gave him several squirts of hydrogen peroxide to swallow. Quoting one of my favorite Futurama characters, I implored that he “barf like a freshman.” (Patty stares at me blankly when I say stuff like that; it’s a thing we have.) Soon enough, the string re-appeared and I performed the invigorating task of clearing away the awful barful remnants. Bear is fine, but still a little dumb.

We had another little animal-related incident in the house. Our cat, Jackson, who is the size of several old Volkswagens and twice as smelly, managed to do a little kitty demolition. The cat-room is a small closet underneath the stairs. There is a cat-door in the drywall which we typically lock at night to keep them from messing with our copies of the “Old West” series of books from Time-Life. (Did you know that John Wesley Hardin was so mean, he once shot a man just for snoring too loud?) Well, Jackson actually managed to push the cat door out of the wall. I’ll say that again ’cause it’s creepy: “he pushed the cat-door out of the wall!” I’m sorry, but if we have cats that can burst through walls, we’re screwed! In his defense, I pretty much had the door connected with duct tape and spit, so I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner. I’ve reinstalled the cat door and reinforced the frame so Jackson the Wonder Manatee should stay where he belongs.

Some people would say I should keep a better eye on my pets. I still don’t know where the hell they get these ideas.