After attending the ALS fundraiser (i.e., Lou Gehrig Day at Wrigley Field) last night, I decided to sleep past the normal play-group time and take Parker to day camp instead. Several bits of good news in this: first, the Les Turner ALS Foundation raised butt-loads of cash; second, even though the Cubs lost, so did the Brewers, so the Cubs are still only one game out of first place; third, Parker gets to hang out all day with his friends; and fourth, said hanging-out will make Parker sleep most of tomorrow when he's back here.
The only bad part is, of course, no office puppy today. Sad.
Parker and Goldie have started playing together mornings. Goldie, until recently, never had anything nice to say to Parker, so this surprised everyone:
As a special bonus, I have some video of Parker (AVI, 10.3 MB) at my office. He has a new behavior: at the end of the day, when I pack everything in an get up to leave, he rushes forward with his paws stretched out front and slides across the terazzo floor. I have no idea why he does this, except perhaps because it's fun.
What?, he's thinking, I'm being good:
Also, some sad news from the dog park. Last night, Andy, a six-year-old giant schnauzer, succumbed to liver cancer. He was a great dog, a little introverted perhaps, but always patient with Parker.
I recently started introducing Parker to some new foods that the dog walkers recommended, and what do you know? Parker cleans his bowl of every last kibble. There seems to be a side-effect, however: he's put on more than a kilo since his last weighing on July 4th, up to 26 kg. Back to a strict feeding schedule, dude. Sorry.
Oh, and the ParkerCam is live today.
Paws for a moment.
Also, I devoured Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this weekend. I don't think I'm giving anything away when I tell you: Soylent Green is people! (I'll wait a discrete interval before writing more about the Potter book. You're on your own about Soylent Green.)
Neither rain, nor snow, nor dead of night, can keep Parker from playing with a tennis ball:
He even brought me the ball, but, you know? Standing out in a raging thunderstorm throwing a soggy ball to a soggy dog just doesn't have a huge appeal to me:
The stuffed vet that Danielle gave Parker a couple weeks ago still lives on—though empty of stuffing and looking a bit haggard:
And Parker is live today. Astute viewers will notice a patch of something on his right hip. That's mud from this morning in the park. So tonight, he gets his quarterly bath.
It's hot. Damn hot. Real hot. So yesterday afternoon I only spent about an hour at Tommy's, and made sure Parker had water:
Why did I schlepp a bowl from home? Because while Nevin's staff very happily provide him with an aluminum take-out container full of water, Parker tends to dump the water out and then shred the container. Using the Fiesta bowl he's used to prevents the shredding part.
Apparently just having me tell him not to worry causes Parker not to worry. Last night I watched the Evanston fireworks display from Northwestern University's landfill, less than 2 km from the launch site. Whereas the night before Parker nearly went out of his skin because of my neighbors' Roman candles, the official (and very loud) city display didn't distract him from trying to catch fireflies.