To understand this story, you need to grasp a few things.

The first is simple. I’m a klutz. Seriously. I can stumble over ripples of thin air. A shadow can send me sprawling. I shouldn’t ever balance four bowls of dog food at the same time.

And, yet, I do. Twice a day. Every day. Most days I successfully deliver the food to the waiting dogs.

Most days.

The second thing you need to understand is Landon is a dog of wonder. He gleefully goes through life enthralled with the flap of butterfly wings, the movement of blades of grass, or the rolling of a dust bunny across the floor. He’s excited to go walking, to receive meals, to go to bed, and to wake up.

He prances, bounds, and runs around the house in defiance of all laws of gravity, which is how he earned his nickname, Boom Boom. When he collides with an end table and sends a lamp flying through the air, he stares at it as if the possibility of such an incident has never occurred to him, despite his long list of broken artifacts around the house.

He also can contort his body from solid to liquid, which is the only possible explanation for how he can move his fifty pounds from one side of a solid object to another. You may think I’m exaggerating, but he once kicked the plastic tray out of his kennel and slid his body through the slot. We came home find his crate locked, the tray in the middle of the room, and Landon happily greeting us at the door.

We’ve never been able to explain how he squeezed through such a tiny opening, but we did put a stop to it by replacing the plastic tray with a sheet of 3/4 inch plywood.

With that preamble, my story begins with a fumble of a bowl of dog food. Kibble flew, a few pieces in his crate but the vast majority slid under his crate. His bowl, delivered with more than my usual finesse, contained all of five little chunks.

The good-natured dog wooed, wag his tail, and ate the little ration. I drop to my hands and knees and pick scattered debris off the floor, dropping them one-by-one into his bowl. With each clink, his eyes widen, his tail wags, and he eats.

For those wondering why I didn’t get him clean food, I need only tell you this is the dog who vacuums the kitchen floor every night before we go to bed. The floor sparkles. With dog spit, but it sparkles. The public acknowledgment of that fact greatly reduces the incentive of people wanting to come to our house for dinner.

When I recovered every scrap of food I could see, I wondered if I had retrieved it all. I bent my head down, shined my cellphone flashlight, and spotted a dozen or more kibble under that piece of plywood held aloft by the wire floor of the crate. I grabbed a ruler off my desk, stuck it under the crate floor, and flicked. A piece of food emerged. Landon’s eyes grew wide in excitement. I clinked the food in his bowl. He snarfed it down.

Ruler. Flick. Clink. Snarf. With each extraction, his eyes grew wider and his body quivered. Who knew his crate could birth food from under his furry paws?

Ruler. Flick. Clink. Snarf. Treat after treat appeared, a never-ending supply of delicious nutrition. I was setting all-time approval scores with him.

With another swipe of the ruler, I determined no food remained. I told him so. His tail slowed, but wagged hopefully. He tapped his paw. I leaned forward, followed the beam of my light, and spotted one last straggler. With a long reach of the ruler, I rescued. Flick. Clink. Snarf.

I’m not sure how to top magic kibble in his eyes.

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Books I’m Reading

After a devastating betrayal, a young woman sets off on an obsessive path to justice, no matter what dark family secrets are revealed. What she doesn’t know―she isn’t the only one plotting revenge.

An affluent daughter of privilege. A glamorous manipulative wannabe. A determined reporter, in too deep. A grieving widow who has to choose her new reality. Who will be the first to lie? And when the stakes are life and death, do a few lies really matter?

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Interesting Links

Microsoft announced the pending retirement of the default font Calibri. If you’ve ever opened a brand new copy of a Microsoft product like Word or Excel, you started using this sans serif font until you changed it to whatever you prefer. Five potential replacements have reached the finalist round and Microsoft invites your input. Okay, fine, I might be stretching to call this an “interesting” link, but those of use who use printed words for a living pay attention to these things.

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Gratuitous Dog Picture

Landon loves the concept of Magic Kibble, food that mysteriously appears over and over from under his crate.