DUCK continues to cultivate Eggs. She roams off a little more often now that all the eggs seem to be delivered to Nest and she's maybe less tired than she was. After a foraging foray, she comes back (as all wild ducks do) to Lake and floats around for awhile, getting her underside amply wet.

Duck eggs need a degree of humidity as well as degrees of maternal body temperature, and the occasional dip in the drink is how a  mother duck arranges that.

Ruby and Cassie are…

Welp, we have a pet duck in the backyard. Don't have a good photo of her yet -- it was storming last night when she was huddled on the nest Ruby found. But it looks like dogs chasing, humans throwing beach balls, and hoses squirting have exactly zero effect on the nesting instinct of the lady mallard.…

One can only hope! As I mentioned the other day, after my honored neighbor (winsomely known as Other Daughter) found a dead Maine Coon Cat behind our houses and concluded one of the coyotes had done it in, she was found trailing her cat up and down the alley.

This morning a new handyman came by to give me some estimates for several small jobs that need to be done. One of the things I hoped he might do is…

But whose call?

This afternoon the human had quite the little scare. I'd noticed a potted plant in the front courtyard was fricasseeing in the heat, and so I walked into the garage and dug out a couple of strange little glass watering gadgets that came my way some years ago. You fill up these globe things with water and poke the end in the ground; supposedly…

Other Daughter surfaced outside the back gate this morning, setting off a corgi barking frenzy. She was walking her cat in the alley.

"Other Daughter" is one of the Perp's two adult daughters, one of whom lives across the street to the east of me and the other two houses down to the west. He calls one of the women his "Pretty Daughter" and the other his "Other…

As anyone who's been paying attention knows, one of my strangest quirks is that I feed my dogs real food: cooked meat, starches, vegetables and fruits, unadulterated by anything that came from a lab bench. This has worked exceptionally well in the past and it continues to do so:

• Ruby and Cassie maintain their normal weight. Neither dog is overweight or underweight.

• Their…

Welp, it turns out to have been a good thing that I hired my old landscaper Richard to build a little fence between the swimming pool and the back door (and the doggy door, conveniently).

Yesterday Ruby the Corgi Pup went into a corgi-baying frenzy in the back yard:

arfarfarfarfarfaROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Holy mackerel! Did one of the meth-heads hop over the back wall? Whaaaa?…

Hooorah! Ruby the Corgi Pup has got the idea about walking nicely on a lead. What a clever little dog she is!

The adventures in medical science -- nine months' worth -- put the eefus on my puppy-raising schemes. It was all I could do to resist having to return her to the breeder, much less walk her every day to get her properly leash-trained.

When she was pretty little, I realized that she did better with a harness than with a collar, and so when we've…

 You'll probably recall from my last post that the other day Cassie evinced a moment of snappishness toward Ruby the (former) Corgi Pup. One reader expressed concern that some dominance aggressiveness might be developing. Further discussion of dominance issues appears in a new discussion string, where the OP describes using a…

Hm. Is a problem building, or is this a passing phase?

Now that Ruby the Corgi Puppy is getting to be about the same size as Cassie the Corgi and is filling out and looking like a grown dog, Cassie is beginning to show considerably less patience with her antics.

Of course, from the git-go she has "corrected" anything that was truly annoying with a fake "bite" (I've gotten in the middle of this once or twice and learned that the feint doesn't involve closing the…

Ha ha! This morning was searching an old folder on a hard disk, not finding it...but I came across this poem I wrote, years ago, from the point of view of a certain dog:

Second and First

Light comes. 

First Bird has yet to call at the waiting dawn, for dark still hangs in the air. 

Just beyond the coarse wood stake fence, fresh cat reeks, pungent wet in the dust. 

And yes, through the faintly graying quiet comes the careful…

Wrapping up the 2014 financial debacle, my English-major math revealed that this disastrous year racked up $9,723 in unplanned and "extraordinary" expenditures. Part of that was...hang onto your hat...TWO THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SIX DOLLARS for Ruby the Corgi Pup. And fifty-one cents.

Holeeee mackerel! This is not my first pup, and so yes, I do know that puppies are expensive. But is this ridiculous or not?

Part of it piled up when she got a series of…

Happy New Year! And a hilarious Corgi New Year to you.

Hereabouts we're ringin' in the New Year with a big, soggy rainstorm. Cassie the Corgi, as we know, loathes and detests water, especially if it's inclined to get on her. Until this morning, it looked like Ruby the Corgi Pup was going to be the same way, presumably having learned her hydrophobia from her sort-of role model.

But no.

Ruby has learned to use the doggy door. Cassie still declines,…

So people say we're sentimental fools to imagine our dogs feel guilty when we catch them in some shenanigan and growl "baaaaad daaawg." These authorities claim that dogs cannot feel guilt, because, according the theory, dogs live in the moment and so don't connect what's happening now with what happened ten minutes ago or what may happen ten minutes hence. This implies that the dog brain is utterly devoid of anything resembling ethics, in the sense that humans understand that…

So I'm driving home from the gas station and the Target this morning. Cruise into the 'hood and see the new owners of the run-down rental on the north corner of MyStreet and Elm are working away at their renovation project. And as I'm snooping curiously to see what they've been up to over the past few days, what should I see limping up the alley but a coyote.

It's broad daylight, not the time of day coyotes come out and about. She's walking on three feet, holding her left foreleg up.…

Happy Thanksgiving, one and all (humans and dogs)! We here in the Valley of the We-Do-Mean Sun hope you're not having to cope with inclement weather by way of getting your families together and your TG feast under way.

Today the high is supposed to be 80 degrees. We'll be feasting outside at the home of my son's friends, the parents of a fine pair of lively twins. Once a year, on Thanksgiving, they invite all their friends and relatives over, trotting out the old folks to parade…

Costco has new Dog Toys (wooHOOO!). Bought Cassie and Ruby a lifetime supply of three stuffed, dog-proof (har har!) "Dragons." Very cute, these objects.

As we scribble, the two Mistresses of the Universe are having it out over the Blue Dragon. They're profoundly engaged in a tug-o'-war. Ruby has one end of the B.D. and Cassie the other. Ruby drags toward the far end of the hall, going wrrrlla wrrll wrrlllll!  Cassie drags toward the end of the hall, going wrla…

Holeeeee Mackerel! I walked in the door from this morning's meeting to find a chewed-up lamp cord scattered all over the living-room floor! Mercifully, Ruby picked the lamp that's plugged into an outlet operated by a switch on the wall. That's all that saved her from being badly hurt or electrocuted.

She's been at large in the house since she learned to work the doggy door and so quit defiling the floors. She has never been a chewer, never been a digger, never been especially…

It's two steps forward and one step backward here of late. Ruby is making great progress toward becoming a grown-up corgi; Ruby and Cassie have become a mini-pack consisting of two fast friends allied in the single goal of bossing the human around; and Ruby has kindly racked up another $350 in vet bills.

1) Step forward

As reported the other day, Ruby finally figured out how to use the dog door and then became so enamored of it the trick was not to get her…

So tonight, it being 10 p.m. and after the mosquitoes' bed-time, we were a-hunting the little bugs on their favorite nest, the ceiling. We'd patrolled most of the rooms, Cassie barking every time the Human cocked the fly-swatter, so as to warn her little winged friends so they could escape. As an afterthought, we dodged into the former TV room, now rarely used since I replaced the television with Netflix.

This is the room where I used to hang out almost every evening, and…