All right, no one is to stone ANYONE until I blow this whistle. Even... and I want to make this absolutely clear... even if they do say, "Jehovah. "

I left the house to run a few errands, yesterday, and left the dogs outside to their own devices. I didn't even bother to put Sadie's "shock" collar on her, because she knows well her boundaries and only rarely ventures past them. (Plus, if she's not wearing it, I can hardly forget to take it off of her and shock her on the way down the driveway.) Moose, for the most part, orbits her and has not been seen to stray far from her side, unless it's to go hide in the mud beneath the back deck.

Upon my return, I found both dogs waiting for me at the top of the driveway, as though they'd been sitting there the whole time planning my welcome. I gathered up my grocery bags and we all went into the house through the interior door of the garage.

Around 20 minutes later, I noticed something odd with the back door of the house, the one leading out onto the deck. Crammed behind the handle of the door were two rolled up mini-magazine-sized pamphlets. I opened the door, already knowing full well what they would be.

"What are these?" I asked Sadie, holding up the November issue of The Watchtower and October's Awake! Sadie saw what I held and then looked away with a guilty air. "What Are These?" I repeated. Again, she dropped her head in shame.

"You let Jehovah's Witnesses get to the back door," I said sternly. "Moosey, I can understand, because he's new and he likes everybody. But YOU..." I said, waving the magazines at her, "YOU let them get all the way to the back door."

Then I noticed that I'd actually left the back door unlocked when I went out. I gasped.

"Jehovah's Witnesses could be in this house right now!" I said. "They could be lurking in the house right now, waiting to jump out and... and witness to me!"

Sadie lay down on the floor and looked suitably wracked with guilt. She was probably regretting not simply pulling the magazines out of the door and letting Moose chew them up.

"For shame," I added.

That the visitors at my back door were Jehovah's Witnesses was not actually the issue. I was mainly putting on a show for the dog's benefit because it struck me as funny for their appearance to BE a problem. The fact is, though, I don't so much mind visits from Jehovah's Witnesses or most other religions, but I also don't tend to invite them in to discuss religion either. My own religious views often conflict with theirs so the discussions I've entertained in the past have quickly degenerated into the three of us (there are always two of them) just conflicting at one another and moving no one's view even a smidge'.

No, the real issue here was that Sadie had allowed strangers to reach my unlocked BACK door. The front door would have been fine, as that's the door that strangers to a home SHOULD be visiting in the first place. I mean, really, isn't it a bit rude to just walk around to the rear door of someone's home uninvited? I would have been pissed off about it if I'd been home to meet them and would likely have pointed this out to them. But to the back door they had gone and Sadie had, apparently, not even attempted to eat them.

Now, I'm not suggesting that she should have attempted to eat them. However, she is an imposing enough dog at 80 plus pounds, with a bark twice as powerful as most male dogs her size, so she could have at least stood in the strangers' path and given them pause to consider whether or not she might eat them. Nope, they'd made it from my driveway, across the 30 feet of boardwalk leading to the back deck (as opposed to the 35 feet of nice clean boardwalk leading to the front door), had time to carefully deposit their magazines behind the handle of the back door, and, presumably, made it safely back to their vehicle. I didn't even see any scraps of clothing that might have indicated a hasty retreat with canine in hot, slavering pursuit.

Oh, I'm sure she barked at them, as she barks at everyone, but I rather expected more of a defensive front from her. Then again, maybe she had guarded the walk to the front door after all, and left Moose to guard the back one where he would have been completely ineffective. Or, maybe one of the Jehovah's Witnesses had cornered her in the front while the other snuck around the back. I don't know.

Regardless, it appears our fearless guard dog, who is impressively brave when it comes to defending us from the ever-present threat of vicious, rabid deer, isn't so good when it comes to smiling, peaceful strangers. Not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing. I guess, instead, what I should really be thankful for is that I don't have a lawsuit on my hands, filed by a mauled Jehovah's Witness or two.

He doesn't know he's cute or anything.

Anna Tolien? I think I went out with her once.

The wife and I have determined for ourselves that our puppy Moose (at right) is not a "damn little chow chow" as has been suggested. The chow features have failed to manifest, beyond a slight spotting at the tip of his tongue. However, we've still been doubtful as to his alleged status as a Leonberger/St. Bernard mix. While he has some Leonberger features, he also has some definite German shepherdy features too, though his flopped forward ears would seem to indicate he wasn't full blooded German shepherd.

At some point while watching TV, a breed of dog called an Anatolian Shepherd flashed across our screen and it struck us that it looked an awful lot like an adult version of Moose might. We quickly dashed to the innanet and looked it up.

Check it.

This is a picture from an Anatolian site. Same black face, same coloration, same curly tail, same love of sticks. The more we read, the more this breed (or a mixture therewith) was the better fit for Moose's ancestry. And from everything we've been reading, like Leonbergers, Anatolian Shepherds are supposed to be great dogs, not to mention exceptional guard dogs. They're also about as enormous as Leonbergers, which makes the wife happy, and with no drooling to speak of, which makes me happy.

Meanwhile, he's really come a long way as far as his potty training is concerned. I think we had at least three consecutive weeks without any piddling in the house and only one or two poop incidents. Mostly, when he needs to go, he either goes to the back door and looks at us until we notice him there, or he comes and finds us and barks at us until we ask him if he needs to go potty at which point he barks louder and/or tries to bite us in the face. The later is discouraged, the former encouraged. However, his efforts don't always work so well when we're asleep.

We've been encouraging both dogs to stay off of our bed. This is not easy, because they LOVE our bed and are fond of sleeping in it with us, if they can get away with it. However, beyond the matter of shedded dog hair and stank residue in the bed, there's the matter of massive and soon to be massive dogs hogging up all the leg room in our bed while we're trying to sleep. We could banish Sadie from the bed fairly well, but without a working crate (due to the fact that Moose destroyed the zipper in his "nite nite" collapsible crate) it was more difficult to keep moose out of it.

So not long after Christmas, we bought them both dog beds stuffed with recycled memory foam shredding. These we've stationed beside our bed and have been enforcing their use. So far this has worked surprisingly well. And the timing of Moose's potty training success finally kicking in around the same time was good. This way, we could sleep through the night with the dogs on their beds and didn't have to worry about puddles in the morning.

Two nights ago, Moose drank a lot of water before bed. At some point in the wee hours, he woke up, had to go potty and began trying to wake one of us up to let him out. Unfortunately, we were solidly asleep and the first we heard of any of this activity was when Sadie snarled after Moose crawled too close to her bed. We snuggled in and were on our way back to sleep when I heard a disturbing sound.

"Why do I hear running water?" I said. And, sure enough, it sounded exactly as if someone had left a faucet on in a steady pour. Immediately, we both thought of the pipes. With night time temps hovering between zero and ten for the past few days, it wasn't inconceivable that we'd had a pipe burst. I thought, Oh, please, let it just be Moosey peeing on the floor.

I leaned up and looked over the edge of the bed. In the low light from the night light in the hall, I could see Moose's little brown body directly beside the bed.

"Moose? Are you pottying on the floor?" I asked him. As I swung my legs out of the bed, Moose turned of his "faucet" and hauled ass for the back door. I followed and let him outside then went back to clean up the mess. I couldn't even be mad at him, because I knew he had probably tried to wake us up before succumbing to the pressure. And from the amount on the floor, his bladder had probably been at capacity.

We're pretty sure this was a one off event. Mostly, he's been sleeping through the night, so we think the days of having to get up with him three times are, at last, done.