Jasper's New Toy

When we were out and about running errands today, we stopped at Petco to pick up a couple of things for Jasper. He does not have many toys, because he doesn't play with them often. I think I've written before about his tennis-ball toy that he doesn't chomp hard enough to squeak. Besides that, he has a rope toy that he has gently gnawed the loose strandy ends off of, and he just finished totally shredding one of Alex's old T-shirts. We've contemplated getting him one of those toys that you put treats inside, and then when the dog chews and plays with it, the treats fall out. However, most of them are made of hard rubber, and we just don't think Jasper would chew hard enough to get the treats out. Today, though, we saw a toy that looks like a little football but with lots of holes in it, and it's made out of very soft rubber. So we bought it, brought it home, stuffed a few pieces of peanut-butter bone in there, and put it down next to Jasper. He has nudged it a couple of times and is currently contemplating it about 6 inches from his nose. We'll see how it goes.

Other excitement today: a realtor came to do a walk-through and give us some ideas of things to do before we put the house on the market waaaay in the future. Apparently I don't get my bathroom upstairs. Bummer. Also, we turn out to have way too many books and are supposed to make our bookshelves more "decorative" than functional before we start showing the place. How weird is that? She was very appreciative of Alex's beautiful work refinishing the floors, however.

And finally, we went and tagged a Christmas tree at the cut-your-own place on the outskirts of town. We're going to be away from mid-December until the 22nd, and then again starting on the 29th, but I really wanted a tree since we have so many wonderful ornaments and this will be our first actual Christmas spent here in Minnesota. Alex is indulging me, though we might come home from Italy to find all of the needles on the floor! It's quite against my family's tradition of procrastination to pick out a tree this early, but we figured it'd be easier to do the choosing now, rather than in a month when the lot has been picked clean. It should be easy for us to pick it up and put it up on the 23rd...accompanied by hot drinks and Handel's Messiah, which has become our decorating tradition. I'm hoping to pick up a wreath at the farmer's market this weekend, too.

Jasper is profoundly unenthusiastic about the decorations going up around the neighborhood: some folks down the street have big inflatable snowmen in the yard, and Jasper HATES them. It took me ten minutes to get him past them on our way back from our run yesterday. He kept leaping into the street to get away from them, and then I had to pick him up and put him back on the sidewalk. He's not that excited about the bright blue blinking snowflakes on one of the other houses, either. Poor guy.