She Knows What She Wants...

...and she knows how to get it! I'm talking about Paris and I'll show you what she did in just a bit.

Wrapping up our home time posts, I thought I ought to share with you a bit about how the girls occupied their time off the road.

Mostly they took long naps between short stints of hard play time. Napping tends to take place in whatever area of the house we are using at the time. If it's meal time (human not dog) or if I'm working on something at the kitchen table, then the rocker is a choice location.

It's popular with everyone and often the cause for some grumbling between them to determine who is going to get it.

And sometimes they can be found stretched out on the couch in the living room,

I know it's not real exciting, but this is what they do, and they do it well.

Paris resides primarily on the back of the couch, on her princess perch.

She rarely leaves it willingly unless she suddenly realizes we are eating, one of us sits down and she thinks it's time for the princess to be held, or she sees one of my in-laws coming to the back door. Nothing gets by Paris from this perch! Maybe that's why she likes it so much. She can bask in the sun and keep an eye on her kingdom at the same time, both inside and out.

Because she likes the couch so much, but has a little trouble in her agility since her broken leg last fall (we don't want to risk a fall and another injury), we decided to buy her a set of steps to make things easier for her. She loves them! She uses them to go up and down, almost all the time. She also likes to sit on them. Another perch for the princess.

These particular steps are hollow and the manufacturer made them so you can lift the steps off and store things inside. I decided it was the perfect place to store the hords of unplayed with toys that the girls have that they never ever use or show any interest in, but that I can't seem to make myself throw away. So one afternoon while we were home I stashed all these unloved toys in the interior of the steps. Out of sight, out of mind right?

A couple nights later, me and the girls are waiting on Malcolm to come in for dinner, and Paris starts scratching at the side of her steps. I kept telling her to stop before she scratched up the finish. This isn't an expensive peice of furniture but let's try and keep it looking nice since it's sitting in the middle of my living room, ok? She is nothing if not persistant when she wants something. And she almost always gets what she wants, as she did in this case. I finally got tired of telling her no, and also was curious about just what she thought she needed so bad, or what she thought was in there. But she obviously knew there was something inside and that she wanted to see what it was. So I took the step lid off and sat down to watch.

Paris, with the other two looking on, proceeded to remove toys from the box, one at a time. She'd pull it out, carry it into the middle of the floor, sit it down, smell it, shove it away with her nose, and return to the steps, repeating the process over and over. It was so amusing and had me laughing. I finally decided, loved or not, she didn't want her toys stuffed away in there. But it was almost as if she was searching for something specific. I wanted to show Malcolm what she had been up to, so I took a short video. Watch and you'll see that she knows what she wants, and knows how to get it.




I am absolutly amazed that among all those toys and she knew that a chewy had gotten in there by mistake! I just dumped the toy basket into the stairs. We didn't place them in one by one. She didn't see that go in there! So she must have smelled it, but I don't see how over the smell of the steps interior, which had a strong odor to it. But this clearly was what she was after, because she was content with the chewy and never went back to the steps. She took her chewy to her perch and enjoyed it until the man came home to give her a back rub and neck scratches.
Dogs noses truly are powerful things! I was impressed!