I Heart My Dog Heads and Fruit

SUMMARY: All the misappropriated lyrics you could want at K-TMH, plus fruit news.

Remember when you used to see "I heart my dog head" on everything? Yeah, like this notepad, which I got because at the time I had a Siberian Husky a long long time ago, like, she's been dead for 12 years, which shows you how long a fad pad can last: Even today, when I'm expressing affection for my dogs, I say "I heart my dog heads!" It's such a catchy phrase.

And with that comes today's song, developed after many long seconds out in the yard playing tunnel/fetch, sung to the tune of "Fish Heads":
Dog heads, dog heads, Fluffy woofy dog heads,
Dog heads, dog heads, I heart them!

In the morning, happy waggy dog heads.
In the evening, dog hair in my soup!

Dog heads, dog heads [etc.]

Ask your dog head anything you want to
When they answer, they will bark!

Dog heads, dog heads [etc.]

Sent my dog heads out to do a tunnel
Didn't have to yell to get them in!

Dog heads, dog heads [etc.]

OK, but enough of operatic tension; it's time for a non sequitur, so let's talk about fruit. Jake was the consummate fruit dog, if I may make a tiny pun; would do anything to get a banana; ate figs until he'd put on about 15-20% of additional weight within a few short weeks; pigged out on apples faster than I could pick up the fallen ones daily; even ate oranges from time to time. He particularly used to eat plums until he had pretty much a steady stream going in one end and out the other, if you know what I mean. Wish Tika would eat more plums, because her anal glands have gone bad a couple of times (May 2007, July 2008), and one simple advice was to feed her 3 prunes a couple of times a week or daily or whenever I remember. Have been doing that--she likes prunes--and so far, so good.

Neither of my current dogs seem interested in oranges, apples, or plums, but they are apparently into pears. I have been finding pear stems lying in the oddest places in the house; apparently, they are not an edible part. Here's the culprit, nibbling off the last minuscule portions of actual fruit:
Tika apparently likes them enough to not merely wait for some to fall to the ground (or disdains those because they're now soiled--after all, who knows what those other dogs have been doing on the ground around that tree), but leaps at the tree to pull fresh ones off. Sadly I have not been able to get to a camera fast enough to record this.
This year, the usually profuse plums were small and nonprofuse; usually we make at least a couple of batches of plum sorbet, but not this year. We rescued barely enough to eat a few a day for a couple of weeks, and that's it. Hardly any went into the compost pile.

The blackberries were disappointing, too. Again, normally I haul in a quart or two a day during the time that they're ripe, but this year the beast depredation was awful, the berries were small and sparse, and a lot of them ripened oddly--half ripe and the other half not ripe, staying red and hard and tart. Very disappointing; I think I had enough for about 4 bowls of morning cereal, and that was it. No blackberry ice cream or sorbet this year, either. Sighhhh

However, the lemon tree, which last year had few, teeny, dry lemons, this year is back to its profusity, as are the orange trees. But check out this orange: Looks like someone neatly sliced a quarter out of it and grafted in part of a lemon, which grew right into place. I wonder if it's possible for a quarter of an orange blossom to be pollinated with lemon-tree pollen and produce this oddity? (I didn't cut it open to see what it was like inside.)

Meanwhile, I've been practicing the "find the obstacle" game. Play tug, take toy away, point body in general direction of the agility obstacle I want them to take, say name of obstacle, praise if they take the correct one. It seems to be very true that, for my dogs, "any noun will do" for whatever the nearest obstacle is. I need to do much much more of training by obstacle name.

And for now, farewell.

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