Wednesday, December 20, 2006

A Mystery


I came down this morning to find puppies rousing to the sound of my voice :-). That means that they are hearing. It's perfect timing since we can keep the house quiet for the next few days until my family arrives. After that, peace and quiet is hard to imagine with so many people and dogs around. But the pups will have a few days to get accustomed to their new sense before the holiday is upon us.

I also came down this morning to a whelping box filled with puppies and little else (see the photo above). The rubber ducky was there but there were no other toys. I thought back to last evening when I cleaned the box and I clearly remember replacing the soiled sheepskin with a clean one and putting the toys back into the box. There had been two pyramids, a stuffed chain, a Christmas toy that Corey had gotten as a present, and a tennis ball toy. These toys were nowhere to be found.

Andy and I scoured the dining room and the dog yard. Andy checked the laundry room thinking that I had misremembered (I do a lot of that these days) and had actually taken them down to wash. No toys. I looked in the kitchen and checked the basket of dog toys. Nothing.

Finally, I went upstairs to our bedroom. There, stuffed under my side of the bed were the missing toys--two pyramids, a chain, the Christmas toy and the tennis ball toy. Just those, no others. Someone, presumably either Corey or Una, had made numerous trips down to the whelping box during the night to steal the puppies' toys.

Andy and I have our suspicion that the culprit was Corey. She has been obsessive about the puppies up until a few days ago but has transferred that obsession to the puppies' toys. A few days ago she emptied their bag of toys but she hasn't touched any of the toys in the whelping box. Last night, while Una was sleeping, she may have seen her opportunity. She knows she can't take a puppy but she sure can swipe a pyramid.

Of course, it could also have been Una. One thing for sure, it wasn't Flyer. She wouldn't make five trips up and down the stairs in the dark for anything except a midnight snack! But then again, when she had a litter she used to scour the house for the right toys to add to the whelping box. When Una was a baby, Flyer insisted upon putting 14 toys in the box, bringing her total number of "babies" up to 15, the size of her largest litter (also sired by O'Reilly). So, perhaps our mystery thief is Flyer.

It's never a dull moment around here. I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings. Hopefully we won't wake to a puppy shoved under the bed!

We seem to be having some website problems on www.gaylans.com so my apologies if you can't get in. In the meantime, new photos are up at www.simplesite.com/gaylans/.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hilarious!! Life's little mysteries bundled into these fuzzy bodies. Corey probably figured if she can't have the puppies, she can sure have a moveable feast of toys.

They are sure darling. What nice heads they have. A Christmas photo is a must! Climbing out of a package? A wine box? Posed (ha ha) around their beautiful mama in a Santa hat? Nosing around a bottle of bubbly underneath the tree?

And speaking of "A Mystery," -- what name to come up with?????