A Dog's Life

Ryker and Cainan are the kings of make believe. They can play with a rock and two sticks and be totally happy (until they start bickering with each other over which stick gets to win the sword fight, that is.) They play a variety of make believe scenarios but one they continually come back to is being dogs. Every time they play Ryker is a dog named “Scout” and Cainan is his faithful companion “Bitty Dog”. They chase each other around on all fours and wrestle around in their dog house (a rickety contraption of blankets draped over chairs which Kinley continually knocks down). They speak only in barks, woofs, and yips but kindly translate into English for each other.

Sometimes one of them will be a human, “the petter”, while the other one is the dog. Of course, on these occasions the dog must wear a leash. The dog puts the loop end of the real dog leash around his arm (thankfully both of their heads are too big to get it around their necks or I’m sure they would) while the petter holds onto the clip end. Recently Ryker was taking Bitty Dog for a walk. As they started across the living room Ryker commanded Bitty Dog to stop and he ran into the other room to get something. When he returned he had the end of a gray plastic Indian tomahawk in his mouth. When we asked him what he was doing he said, in his best British accent, “I forgot my pipe. Come Bitty Dog.”

Apparently they had just watched “101 Dalmatians” and were reenacting the scene where Roger takes Pongo to the park. I forgot that cartoon characters used to smoke.