You left half a donut on the desk in the same room as a dog and left the room, expecting that you would find your donut on the desk when you returned?

Who are you, and what have you done with the real Tbogg?

I like that Virus thingey.

Arthur once somehow got to the center of the kitchen island (40″ tall, 4.5′ across) and nabbed the brand new package of Brie, and then, without making a sound despite wearing his jingly collar, made it outside around the back of the house before unwrapping and eating the entire thing. Wild stomach antics ensued….

Our late beloved Labrador Goldie once devoured a meticulously-constructed gingerbread house from the center of the dining room table. Unlike Fenway, the suspect in the doughnut caper, she wasn’t smart enough to conceal the evidence.

Yeah, around here it was Lucky and the freshly baked banana bread put out to cool. It never got a chance to cool before it was scarfed down. She (Lucky) then had the audacity to insist on looking to be fed later that night… Was. So. Not. Happening.

Oh, and hot? Up here in Vermont (one of the Unpatriotic Zones) it was 18 degrees this AM when I was dragged out of bed to go for a walk. Not only was that s bit too cold for October, but I was in the middle of this juicy dream about me, Sarah Palin and a large hot tub (I was in the hot tub having a good time; Sarah was back home in Alaska in the snow wearing her Nieman Marcus thong, trying to fix the starter on Todd’s snowmobile using nothing but her powers of persuasion and an RNC credit card).

Emmy the Demon Dog, in her younger days, could catch birds on the wing (stalk them then at the end of a mad dash would jump 5ft in the air and nab them) but didn’t like to eat them right away, assuming we didn’t get them away from her first. Oh no, she preferred the piquant tang of well aged bird stored underground in the garden for a week or so, and then best enjoyed from the comfort of the house (specifically her bed). Only took one time to alert us to her gourmet proclivities, and so we instituted mandatory mouth check every time she came inside when the ground wasn’t frozen (as burying them in the snow apparently did not provide the appropriate pickling – like I said, a gourmet).

She eventually got to the point where she would have just a single foot hidden under her tongue, and so mouth check became what amounted to a periodontal exam as we had to pry open her mouth several times a day and get our fingers all slobbery as we felt around inside her cheeks and under her tongue.

Ah, the joys of dog ownership!

ALL YOUR HALF-DONUT ARE BELONG TO US!!!!!

Von, my deepest condolences. I have heard more angst-filled stories about constructing gingerbread houses than I could shake a spatula at. Since I don’t do Xmas, I had thought I’d go through life without building one myself. But there was the time that I was housesitting a six-year-old girl for a week, and her parents had left a gingerbread-house kit. Unfortunately, the instructions were in German, and by the time I’d scared up a German-speaking friend and gotten our marching orders translated (Achtung!), it was bedtime. Many tears.

Then after we’d gotten the G-d***d thing built the next day, the family pug ate it during the night. More tears. And the pug had vomited the gingerbread house all over the carpet.

When my last Boxer Terri, (rest her manic soul), was young, I left her home alone for an hour while I went food shopping. When I got home I discovered she had taken an unopened bag of caramel apple lollipops off the baker’s rack, opened the bag and chewed every pop up and spit out lots of sticky crumbs all over the living room rug. It took days to clean it all up as it was stuck to the carpet. Later that month she managed to get two little tubes of food coloring off the kitchen counter and I came home to red and green spots all over the rug and her mouth. Never did get the red stains out of the rug.

The worst my new Boxer Hank has done (so far) is completely shred my expensive memory foam mattress topper while I was at work.

Yeah…well, my friends had to get their beagle’s stomach pumped when he unwrapped and ate an entire box of chocolates. I tell ya. Those bassets got nothin’ on the beagles. (I’m writing in Palinese today.)

Love teh pups.

Our greyhound Boomer has kept his girlish figure 4 years into his retirement, but it isn’t for lack of trying. A few Februaries ago I made two 14″, 5-egg, 1/2 lb.-of-butter King Cakes for Mardi Gras, one for us and one for our friends who had just had a baby. Left one at the back of the stove to cool while walking the other down the block to our friends, and by the time we returned 15 minutes later there was nothing left of King Cake #2 but the plastic baby Jesus, licked clean in the middle of the dog bed.

My no longer living basset once removed a whole cooked pot roast from the kitchen counter and buried it under the porch. That was the last time anything edible was left at any height in the house.

Obama’s off the campaign trail–he could have the dougnut.

I’m getting the full brunt of the “you gave me ten treats in the last five minutes but what have you done for me lately?” treatment.