Update on Molly the Dog

My parent's went out to dinner last night; she ate two trees.
Hmmmm.........

Ignore the elephant in the room...

Visiting my parents’ house on Easter weekend we had our second experience with Molly the Saint Bernard. Last time we were there she was a bouncy puppy of about 35 pounds with sharp puppy teeth. She ate my husband’s glasses and left several holes in various clothing pieces. A couple of months later she was as big as me and weighed 70 pounds with the biggest head you’ve ever seen. I was afraid of what she might eat this time.

My parents are very good with animals and have been working very hard to get Molly trained and under control. After all, she will be about 200 pounds by the time she is full-grown. You just have to have a dog like that in control. My dad walks her, well marches her, everyday after work. She goes to the dog park several times a week with my niece and takes obedience classes. She was still having some issues with biting so they invited a dog whisperer over. Someone they ran into recommended him who had heard about his great successes with animals. He was connected with the Humane Society.

He came over and just wanted to observe how the family reacted with the dog. They wanted to find out if the biting was a puppy thing or something else. The trainer observed and basically said they were doing everything right. The dog was basically jealous when she wasn’t getting the attention.

About that time the cat saunters up to the dog. A little history on this cat is needed. This cat found my parents house and moved in. She belonged to a neighbor down the street that had passed away. She came over and decided she wasn’t leaving. So mom and dad asked the relatives if they could keep her. They agreed and the cat happily took over the then petless house. The cat lived an amazing life of leisure and then the dog moved in. Not just a dog, a Saint Bernard puppy. Molly really just wanted to be friends, but the cat would have none of it.

The cat pulls its ears back, bares her teeth and hisses at the dog. The dog will not touch the cat and is completely buffaloed by her. The cat provokes most of the encounters just to let Molly know who is in charge. The dog whisperer loves the cat and tells my parents that’s how you handle this dog. The cat knows what she’s doing. She may be small but she is in charge. He gave them some advice on what to do and left them with their new training regimen.

Molly has now had several weeks of training with the new techniques by the time we show up for Easter. This is a different dog. She’s huge and slobbery, but under much more control. We were all mulling around in the kitchen at breakfast trying to get our breakfast together and Molly walked in. She just wants to be in the middle of everyone, she’s very social. But it’s a small kitchen and when you add a 70-pound Saint Bernard puppy to the mix it’s hard to move. Mom says to just ignore the dog. Right. We all juggle our food and try not to spill it as Molly leans up against us trying to get our attention, I pronounce, “It’s hard to ignore the elephant in the room.”

Looks like Molly will eventually get over her puppiness if she doesn’t completely exhaust and slime everyone in the process. She’s a handful albeit very sweet. It’s a good thing she’s cute!

Wine Words

My husband, Boyd loves to describe how the wine tastes when we are imbibing. Sometimes he overuses a term or two like chewy and legs.

We went to Napa for our 27th wedding anniversary to tour the wineries. At the first winery I grabbed a mailing list card and a pen as we started tasting. We took the first sip and Boyd said, "robust." I wrote it down. My first mistake was telling him what I was doing. When I explained I was going to write down all the descriptive wine words he said on our trip, he may have been a little annoyed and was oddly quiet about the first few wines. I had to pry it out of him. It actually became quite hilarious by the end of the trip and six wineries later. Some quotes are from Boyd, some from me, some from our wine hosts. Enjoy, we did!

Black Stallion:

Robust

Thin

Not very pleasing

No taste

Smokey

Liquored up on the first four

Clos du Val:

It's vanilla!

Tannin finish

yeah

I prefer a wine you can pour and drink now

Folie a Deux/Napa Cellars:

Very drinkable

This is kinda growin' on me

Let's switch

But I haven't tasted it yet

I know that smell

This has cinnamon

A little spice

St. Supery's (Clearly we had too much wine by the time we got here):

Grapefruit

She looks professional

Fuller

Mouthier

Taste is still growing

It's awesome

Bolder

Let's switch

I haven't tasted it yet

As Randy Jackson would say, "It's all right dude."

It's awesome

Mark that one

Kicks it

Made for lamb chops

Something gamey

Hella good wine

I think when you quote Randy Jackson or describe wine as "hella good" you should stop tasting, but oh no, not us.

V. Suttui: We didn't wine taste here. We shopped for lunch in their deli and bought wine cork candles in their gift shop and then ate lunch on the lawn. We were in desperate need of food. Great cheeses and deli food there and a lovely area to eat your lunch in.

Franciscan:

Creamy

Sweet

Huh

Oh dear that's really good

Now she's snorting

I'm at a loss of words

Embraceable

Bastards (This is a very descriptive word for I have to buy this really expensive wine!)

I think we bought two bottles of wine at Franciscan. It wasn't even one of our planned stops. It put us way over budget.

We were done, the wineries were closing. We bought almost a case of wine. We had consumed too much wine, lunch, a bag of fritos and a can of bean dip and we had spent way too much money but we had a lot of fun in the process and made many people laugh at the wineries.