dogs dont care about xmas

dogs dont care about xmas
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

In the spirit of wild holiday energy, I went to the river this morning with two dogs, two Santa hats, two leashes, a pocket full of milkbones and a partridge in a pear tree. I had this brilliant idea where the dogs would either wear the Santa hats or they would hold them in their mouths and do cute things with the lovely frosty icy river morning in the background and then I would make incredibly adorable holiday cards with the resulting works of photographic genius.

Yes. Well, best laid plans of mice and men and all that. I should have either soaked the hats in bacon grease or sewn elastic bands on them or maybe just cut out the middle thread and sewn them directly to the dogs. Django obligingly grabbed the hats and ran but he kept dropping them in icy puddles before I got a decent shot and Theo, clearly feeling that that the whole Santa hat thing was below his dignity, ignored them completely no matter how much I cajoled. "You won't be in the holiday cards if you don't hold the hat!" I said threateningly but it turned out he was okay with that.

And then they flushed a deer - a buck, a big buck with antlers and everything - out of the woods. That was beautiful and terrifying, because at first I thought that the deer and the dogs were all going to charge up onto I-40 which would, you know, sort of wreck the holidays for everyone, particularly the deer, but instead the deer broke out onto the field with the dogs in hot, if somewhat confused (they've never, to my knowledge, actually encountered a deer before) pursuit. The deer booked across the little road and into the woods across Hominy Creek, where Theo stopped, because it was after all 24 degrees or something and Theo is not without a modicum of sense. Django charged on through the water and came back frozen again, but being covered with ice doesn't seem to faze him one iota. He just shakes the worst of the hoarfrost off now and then with a small clatter of icicles and keeps on running.

In other holiday news, though, I got my nativity scene out and set up on the good red Christmas tablecloth and it looks all pretty and makes me feel super Christmasy. Tonight I'm going to go get a tree and I have a whole ham, courtesy of my mother and the Meals on Wheels people, sitting in the back of my car. Along with the holiday cards, featuring mostly Django in motion, which actually turned out really well for the most part and, by the way, I love Kinkos forever. Even though, yeah, I have turned into one of those middle aged women who has pictures of her dogs on her holiday cards, which is kind of terrifying, but then we all knew it was coming and, let's face it, young M would rather face a firing squad than the prospect of a family Christmas photo. Sort of like Theo.