Last night I was looking for something in the dog supply closet. I keep food bags, new boxes of Greenies, leashes and collars, new birthday gift things, and just about everything "dog" in there. Journey likes to help me browse when I open the door. This time he found a deer antler. I had purchased three of them a while ago and one had fallen off the shelf. My three dogs, at that time, Spirit, Quest and Pirate liked them at first, but seemed to grow tired of them. I realized that Journey had never seen them. He was very interested, so I found the other two and gave them to everyone to chew on. Journey just seemed amazed and also he treated it a little like a critter, in that he seemed to realize it had been a living thing.
I watched him as he turned it over and over, smelled it, nibbled on it and stared at it. Pirate decided that Journey had the best one, so they switched and then went on to play musical antlers. Everyone thought the one their brother had looked better. Journey liked the one with 3 points and as soon as Pirate let it go, he went over and nabbed it.
He decided to take it out on the deck where he likes to lie on the suncot and chew bones and stuff. Now, before you ask, no I did not have my camera ready and it is really a shame because the scene that followed was hysterical.
First he started out the dog door as usual - head first, with the antlers in his mouth. Well that particular antler is kind of wide and because of where he was holding it, it jambed on the edge of the doggy door. He tried again and still did not have it positioned where it could go through the 8.5" x 15" dog door. Just to add a little stress, he had to keep looking behind him to see if Pirate was coming to get it back. He lucked out, as Pirate had fallen asleep in the hallway. When he could not get the antlers through the opening, he finally turned around and tried to back through the doggy door. This is where I really lost it. OMG you just cannot imagine how funny it is to see a dog try to lift his hind legs high enough to back through a doggy door. He was unable to make that work and he finally turned around and persisted head first. He made it, but not before I almost died laughing. It looked so funny! That is one scene I will always regret not having photographed.
This morning I was thinking about it and when I looked out on the deck I noticed that Journey had collected all three antlers and had them on his deck lounge for safe keeping.
He kept looking at them and then up at me, as if to ask if it was OK that he had them there. What a funny boy he is. Only Quest and I got to watch that scene and Quest thought it was pretty amazing too.
