Like Marley & Me? Meet Bruce...

We have been blessed with the presence of a 6 month old Lab Puppy. He was so cute and cuddly when we brought him home to live with us at 7 weeks old. We named him Bruce after the shark in Finding Nemo (he had about that many sharp teeth). Well, now he's HUGE and wild and still cute, but not cuddly. If you've seen the movie Marley & Me you've pretty much seen Bruce. OK, this brings me to the real story...

This morning I let Bruce out in the back yard to go potty. He loves to run outside! So I came back in to fix myself a glass of tea and get my day started. When I returned to the back door to let him in, he was running circles in the back yard joyously carrying some great treasure in his mouth, completely uninterested in me. Unable to recognize this new toy he had, I put my coat on and went outside to see if he wanted to play fetch (which he usually does). Well, his new "toy" was an armadillo's tail. A smelly, been-dead-a-few-days armadillo tail. I don't know where the rest of the armadillo is. I don't know how his dead tail got in my backyard. But there I am, in my pajamas and coat and just-woke-up hairdo, chasing my dog and his rotten armadillo tail around the backyard at 6:45 in the morning and shouting (very ineffectively, I might add), "Bruce! Bruce! Come! Come here, boy! Bruuuuce! Get over here! Come!" You get the picture, right. I finally got him to drop the tail by tossing pebbles over his head. His fetching instinct kicked in and he dropped the stinky treasure. Did I mention that Bruce was my husband's idea?? I wonder if he had the armadillo tail in mind when he said to me, "We need to get a puppy. A lab puppy. It'll be so fun." Too bad hubby was out of town and didn't get to witness this morning's antics. I'm sure it would have made his day!!