Super Margot!

Our new dog Margot's favorite thing to do, fetch toys that I throw across the room and make a massive leap onto the pillows on my battered couch, to think, just last month I was thinking about getting a new one. I think I'll hold that off for a while.

Margot

My wife is going to grad school up in San Jose and she got this idea in her head that I'm too lonely down here in Lemoore by myself during the week and needed some company. So after a couple of weeks of searching around online, we went out with Gatsby (our 5 year old faithful mutt) to check out some of the selection she had found. I figured I would let Gatsby make the final choice since he's really the four footed boss around the house. We met the first two dogs on the brides list, Venus, who was a was a shy little black and white dog who had a great liking for eating cat poop (3 pieces while we met) and Margot, an Australian Cattle Dog, who was a bundle of energy just a little bit smaller the Gatsby. Gatsby and Margot got along like 2 peas in a pod so the choice was made.

Since then, they continue to get along good, it took less then a week to get her potty training back (which was better then Gatsby) but she has a real problem that I'm really trying to shake. If it's an object small enough to lift comfortably, she'll chew it up. This list includes, books (all of Sherri Tepper), wires, power supplies (one of my externals), shoes (2 sets of Vans, my killer bunny slippers and an old pair of my wifes boots), CD's, white out, medical tape and the total destruction of stuffed animals. Bitter Apple doesn't seem to work so instead of despairing, she's given me an excuse to make some lifestyle changes. My house is becoming doggy and baby proof and neater at the same time, good changes but I do miss the use of that external.

Here's the latest family picture.

The Little Black Bunny of Doom

Going to war has always been a somewhat mythical experience, legends often rise up and just as many are dashed to the ground (well really, mostly just rumors and stories). One such tale I've heard over the last couple years (since 2006) as been of a black bunny who comes out at dusk and goes up to strangers and allows them to pet him. Yeah, right, in the middle of war zone with some sort of howling beasts that live in the waddee a couple hundred feet away and face it, I know that there are some very unfriendly military folk out here. This has to be one of those urban myths that they use on the new guys fresh off the plane, I'm not about to fall for it.

Well I was walking home the other night, the light was at my back and a black blur came up on my left and I froze and looked and along came a little black bunny. He hopped right up to me as friendly as can be and puts his head on my foot. And my hand without asking my brain for permission, reached down and started scratching him behind his ears like it was the most normal thing in the world.

I sat there dumb stuck as the light drained from the day and continued petting him. What do I do now? Who's going to believe me, oh, yeah, me being me, had my trusty camera in my pocket and was able to prove to the non-believers that indeed, there is a friendly black bunny that comes out to be petted in the twilight. I gave him a granola bar from my pocket and went out to share a little bit of the mystery of the bunny with the rest of my Marines. It's not often you get to prove a legend on film.