Another Kong Emergency

I’m lying in bed as I write this because, once again, Olga didn’t want to get up. She’s curled in the warm blanket by my feet. The dog dictates a disturbing amount of all our behavior.

Yesterday we came home from work and Olga, as usual, ran to get her Kong toy. (She always greets us with the toy in her mouth, as if we’ve arrived to play.) But she couldn’t find it, and neither could we. We looked under all the furniture, behind every door, out in the garden — nothing.

I can only figure that she carried it with her when the dog walker picked her up in the afternoon, and subsequently left it in the street, or she left it in the garden and another animal carried it off. (Could a fox even lift an XL Kong?)

We ordered three more, for emergency delivery today — because even though I vowed after the Heath Kong Thief Incident to always keep a spare on hand, we don’t have an extra. Fortunately, we do have tennis balls, and they’ll do in a pinch, though she destroys them within minutes.

To keep her amused yesterday, Dave plucked our one remaining hard, green apple off our apple tree and threw that for her. She chased it down and began eating it. Dave said, "Apple seeds aren't good for dogs, are they?" So we confiscated it, removed the seeds and gave it back to her, and darned if she didn't eat the whole thing.

In other news, after I wrote the other day about taking my noisy orange juice to English class in college, I got to thinking about my Freshman English instructor. I Googled her up (as we say in the American South). Turns out she died a few years ago — but she seems to have led an interesting life. I always liked her and still have a draft of the paper I wrote in her class, “Mrs. Moore: A Study of Character Development in ‘A Passage to India,’” with her notes in the margins.

Strange, the things we save. I kept it because I liked the book so much -- the paper itself was unremarkable. I don't remember what grade I got but it must have been OK.

I cleaned up some of the garden yesterday evening -- threw away our dying autumnal cosmos, including the white one I rescued back in June, and cut down the nigella and the foxglove. I'm leaving the ragwort for now, even though it's going to seed, because it still has lots of yellow flowers and I saw a hoverfly on it just the day before yesterday. As long as it's benefitting wildlife, it can stay!

(Photos: A mosaic of St. George and the Dragon by Giorgio Barsanti, in Clapham.)