What?, he's thinking, I'm being good:
Also, some sad news from the dog park. Last night, Andy, a six-year-old giant schnauzer, succumbed to liver cancer. He was a great dog, a little introverted perhaps, but always patient with Parker.
I recently started introducing Parker to some new foods that the dog walkers recommended, and what do you know? Parker cleans his bowl of every last kibble. There seems to be a side-effect, however: he's put on more than a kilo since his last weighing on July 4th, up to 26 kg. Back to a strict feeding schedule, dude. Sorry.
Oh, and the ParkerCam is live today.
Paws for a moment.
Also, I devoured Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this weekend. I don't think I'm giving anything away when I tell you: Soylent Green is people! (I'll wait a discrete interval before writing more about the Potter book. You're on your own about Soylent Green.)
Neither rain, nor snow, nor dead of night, can keep Parker from playing with a tennis ball:
He even brought me the ball, but, you know? Standing out in a raging thunderstorm throwing a soggy ball to a soggy dog just doesn't have a huge appeal to me:
The stuffed vet that Danielle gave Parker a couple weeks ago still lives on—though empty of stuffing and looking a bit haggard:
And Parker is live today. Astute viewers will notice a patch of something on his right hip. That's mud from this morning in the park. So tonight, he gets his quarterly bath.
It's hot. Damn hot. Real hot. So yesterday afternoon I only spent about an hour at Tommy's, and made sure Parker had water:
Why did I schlepp a bowl from home? Because while Nevin's staff very happily provide him with an aluminum take-out container full of water, Parker tends to dump the water out and then shred the container. Using the Fiesta bowl he's used to prevents the shredding part.
Parker hung out with my friends and me at Tommy Nevin's on Sunday to catch the seisiún. One friend brought him a belated birthday present, a squeakie shaped like a vet (complete with "Vet Victim" name tag); Parker had removed half the stuffing and the squeak bladder before we finished our crisps.
One of the rules at the pub is that dogs have to stay on the patio. It actually got a bit chilly, so we humans to a table just inside the line of demarcation. Parker kept testing the pub's defenses:
Happy dog with tennis ball:
I'm starting a new project on Monday that will consume tons o' time. The good news is that Parker will be with me in the office probably four days a week. The bad news is that "Today's Daily Parker" will become "The Daily Parker Roundup" starting next week. In other words, The Daily Parker may not have daily Parker for a while. Somehow, I think we'll all survive.