Beagle Tendencies

There are two things that completely capture Pongo’s attention: unattended human food and horse pens. This is quite a random pair of items, I realize. The food part is obvious, and he will jump on counters to get it!
We have discovered his attraction to horse pens during our recent adventures at the dog park. (Don’t ask me why there is a horse pen in the middle of a state park). Last week, Pongo ran into the horse pen TWICE to cover himself head to toe in horse droppings! I believe that this is a hunting instinct, but what a smelly one! And of course, Perdi follows him in there because she is a puppy and that’s what puppies do. She does not roll in droppings…she just eats them!
As the second horse pen incident was happening, I was at first absolutely incensed at Pongo. He would not come to me until he was satisfactorily covered, no matter how many treats I offered. (Treats get Perdi out in a split second.) In the meantime, I am dragging Perdi out and worrying myself to death about Pongo getting kicked by a horse or stepped on, etc. Then a kind lady walks up to me and tells me that if I can’t control my dogs, I should get them shock collars because dogs are not allowed in the horse pens.
That really made me mad because P & P come to me whenever I call them anywhere else in the park and I am certainly not going to torture them for this one incident. When Pongo finally comes to the fence, covered in stinkyness, my new friend informs me that I “sure have a chore to do tonight.” (To clean him off, in case I didn’t notice that he was completely BROWN.)
I’m sure my face was bright red, as it gets when I am angry, embarrassed, or pretty much for any other emotion you can think of! I didn’t say anything to her and walked away with my smelly dog (on his leash). Luckily, she and her dogs went in the other direction.

Last night, I got done with almost everything I needed to do for the first round of lectures today. (There’s only so long I can program in Matlab, you all know that!) So I decided to organize all of our DVD’s. Matt and I just bought a “ladder” bookshelf, which just leans against the wall. (I’ll post a picture later.) This shelf’s sole purpose is to consolidate all of our movies in to on area. So I got to work and even alphabetized them all! We have lots of movies…
I also watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (EMHE) from Sunday. I DVR’d it because Matt and I watched The Great Debaters (great movie!) on Sunday evening together. Anyway, Sunday’s EMHE was done in Chapman, KS. Chapman is not far from my hometown and got hit by an F4 tornado last summer.
The people that received the new house couldn’t have deserved it more. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more emotion-filled episode of EMHE. What I really liked was that they did other projects in Chapman besides just the one house. They built a community storm shelter and planted a garden for an elderly woman whose new house didn’t have one. They also fixed up a couple other houses and filled them with furniture for people who had lost everything. It was a wonderful show!
I’ll try to post some recent pictures soon!