TO FOLLOW SOON:

2.PUPPY – Sunday, November 13, 2022 – Scooter eats chocolate

3. PUPPY – Today, November 14, 2022 – The toaster fear

1.          PUPPY - Monday, November 7, 2022 – SCOOTER’S PILLOW

“She was right,” you know.” Scooter’s speech was a bit slurred. The edge of his small pillow was in his mouth as he lifted it from his bed.

I ignored his comment.

“Mom, she was right,” he insisted.

“Scooter. Pillow. Bed,” I said. He’s cooperative. He turned to put the pillow back.

“Good Scooter,” I said, handing him a treat. He did what he was told to do.

“Mom,” he said, meaning to carry a point along with the pillow. “She was right.”

“Alright!” I said, “She was right.” My attitude wasn’t.

“She,” is our neighbor, Susan. She and her husband, Don, had just left our home after watching the Seahawks/Cardinals football game. No fewer times than maybe ten during that game, Susan saw Scooter Sublime lift the fluffy pillow from his bed and carry it to the living room carpet with every intention of chewing open a small hole through which he would perform small surgery, pulling out and scattering all the stuffing with no intention of suturing up anything afterward.

Perhaps it is better to say that Scooter was intent upon opening the pillow, intent upon seeing stuffing strewn about the room. A paragraph ago when I said Scooter had “every intention,” I used a countable noun. There is the possibility of more than one idea or purpose lurking in the phrase “every intention.” Intentions are countable. But Scooter held only one idea. Scooter was intent upon bestrewing stuffing. The word intent suggests the idea of actually achieving some one thing. Scooter aimed to achieve.

            [Just for clarification, intention always takes ‘of’ or ‘to’ whereas Intent requires ‘on’ or ‘upon,’ Surely along with me you see that the difference between these words matters.]

 But I digress.

 Whenever Scooter absconds with his bed pillow, I say, “Scooter, no. Pillow. Bed,” I point to his bed. Scooter reluctantly, but obediently, returns the pillow to the bed where it belongs. Scooter gets a treat in recognition for his obedience. This has gone on for a while. It went on well into Sunday’s Seahawk November 6th game. That was the day when rather than watching the third-and-long down on the TV screen, neighbor Susan watched Scooter.

“Ah!” she said. “He gets rewarded for disobedience. Well done, Scooter Sublime.”

“That’s what I mean, mom,” says Scooter on Monday morning. “I disobey. I take the pillow from my bed intent upon tearing it open and pulling out every last shred of stuffing. You catch me at the first step. You call for my attention. You tell me what to do. I do it. And I get rewarded. It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure this out.”

 “Alright, Scooter. She was right.” No more treats for disobedience.  

“Only fair,” said the pup as he replaced his pillow.