Saturday:

This morning, I got up. Got out of bed. But before I dragged a comb across my head, I looked at my watch. 5:57 AM. I stumbled out to find Mrs. Knilram already up.

"We didn’t reset the clocks last night. It really is 4:57, right?" I asked her.

"No, Knilram. Today is Saturday, not Sunday. The time change is tomorrow."

Well, at least I remembered the time change is this weekend. But I would have liked to get that extra hour of sleep.

I had a wonderful breakfast. Mrs. Knilram bought the generic equivalent of Grape Nuts. There are times when you know that someone loves you, and it is one of those times when I see that box on the cupboard shelf.

Grape Nuts are wonderful. Not only can you eat them, but if you let them soak in water long enough, they make a paste that you can use to patch holes in concrete. Nevertheless, I love them. I love them almost as much as the whole grain bread that can double as sandpaper. Strange but true.

On the emergency backup dog front, things continue well. When we visited her in the pound, we never heard her bark. She was in a cage with her brother. He would bark excitedly, asking for attention, but she was always quiet. The first day home, she didn’t bark at all.

If the emergency backup dog doesn’t bark, that isn’t a problem. The primary dog barks more than enough for the both of them put together.

But today, she started to bark some. When we went on the morning walk, she barked at everyone she saw. I don’t know her well enough to know yet if it was her bark asking for attention, or if it was her stranger alert bark. I tend to think it was the latter. She also barked at family members when they walked in the back door. Once she realized who it was, she stopped barking. Again, I think she was warning of an intruder, but I’m not sure yet.

I’ve heard that a new dog will start to bark when it feels at home. It does seem that she is settling in well to the family.

One of the strange things was how she reacted when the primary dog would bark to alert us of strangers (the mailman, a strange sound outside, an imagined sound outside, a cloud that is floating above the house, etc). The primary dog would charge toward the door, and the emergency backup dog would sprint the opposite way and run upstairs.

Where does she think she is going? Upstairs to hide under the bed? We might have a bit of a chicken on our hands.

I’m also learning that her terrier mix doesn’t have any retriever blood at all. Not a drop. She’s not getting this idea of playing with a ball, even with the example of the primary dog. She doesn’t have a clue. She just looks at me in a way that says, "Why would I chase that? It is just a ball! Go get it yourself!"

But to the primary dog, chasing a ball isn’t a game. It is the meaning of life itself. There isn’t anything more important in the world than retrieving that ball. The primary dog can hardly contain herself while I try to play ball with the emergency backup dog. I could tell that she wanted to push the puppy aside and grab the ball. She was clearly thinking, "Stupid puppy! You must get the ball! Oh, let me get it, please, please, please? She’s not even trying, but I can do it. Let me get the ball, please!"

Sometimes life is difficult for the primary dog, but I think she will survive.