Man's best friend

I'm doing research on poodles right now, for this juicy ghostwritten non-fiction book deal I scored. Did you know that poodles were used to retrieve arrows and truffles in the olden days? And no, not the cake truffle in a deep dish Athena (she likes that stuff, uses her Tim Horton donuts to make truffles) but the elusive mushroom that grows under the dirt.

So that got me to thinking... What has Corey, the 100 lb senile dog, brought me in his 11 years of service to the family?

Well...A zucchini. When he was 6 months old he brought a zucchini to the house site (we were building our house, and only had a foundation at the time. I was master cement maker, because when I say we were building, I don't mean hire a contractor and bitch about the bills). He must have got the zucchini from my FIL's garden. How he loved that thing, carried it everywhere until he dropped down the cinderblock foundation, never to be seen again. For weeks after, he'd go to that corner of the foundation and peer into the wall longingly until we finally framed in the house and the zucchini was lost forever.

Then there was the time he brought me paper cups. We were doing summer riding camp, and the little angels would leave their paper cups, with their names on them, all over the yard. Corey would have rather hunkered down on the lawn and ripped them to shreds, but instead (because he is a smart dog at times) he'd bring them to me and I'd shriek holy ever-loving madness all over the place.

Lastly, he's brought me a deer antler. A little tiny thing, but it has 3 prongs and it's very cute. This is probably the one thing he didn't really want to share, because to him it's just a cool bone and well, we don't share cool bones. But I snagged it, fearing he'd found a chicken bone somewhere. It now lives on the top of the TV because I've never seen any protocol on how to display 6 inches of deer antler.

But I'd love to have a truffle dog some day. Of course, we don't HAVE truffles here, but maybe if I pretend he's a guide dog, he can go into the supermarket and find me one. Until then, we're happily stuck with a zucchini, paper cup and antler retrieving dog.