Merry Christmas!

Indy had quite a Christmas and is resting soundly now. On Christmas eve he opened presents from his Secret Santa, he received three plush squeaky toys, one that looks like an orange doll, one that looks like a blue elephant, it's ears crinkle too, and one that looks like a shaggy puppy. He's busy learning their names. I try to give most of his toys names so that I can tell him to go fetch something, he's very smart, I would say 95% of the time he gets it right, the other five percent of the time I think he's jut feeling lazy and goes for the nearest item or the item he'd rather play with. He also received a red plaid collar cover and some beef tendon chews, which he absolutely loves.

Indy has been completely overindulged this Christmas, he's tasted yogurt covered pretzels, maple bacon, maple ham, sweet bread, pineapple and a few other naughty things.

We went for a run this afternoon and met up with his buddy Hercules, they hadn't seen each other in a few weeks, you'd think it had been years the way they carried on. In their initial exuberance to greet one another, they took Hercules' owner right off his feet, luckily the snow made for a soft landing. They must have wrestled and played keep away for a solid hour before the humans had frozen toes and fingers and decided enough was enough. The boys were in no way ready to end their play time. Between the two of them, they really are the friendliest, happiest dogs I've ever met. They both simply exude the joy of being alive and being a dog.

They met up with a third dog who was relatively friendly, Indy took a lack of outright hostility as an act of friendship and tried to follow the new dog home, gleefully ignoring his recall command and running circles around me, obviously not ready for play time to end. Tomorrow, back to boot camp for Indy, doggy training 101.

For now, we're all stuffed silly on ham and I'm the last one awake in a very quiet house full of critters sleeping off full bellies, it is unusually peaceful.

However you celebrate this time of year, I hope it was a good one for you and your family. Here's looking forward to a new year!