Black and White Sunday: Keeping a Nose on the Neighborhood

We've all heard the expression "to keep an eye on.....something" Well, if you are a dog with that incredibly sensitive nose, keeping a nose on the neighborhood is probably just as effective. Here's Wilson, happily sitting indoors on a hot day, with the storm door cracked open just enough, whiffing in the passing scents.

Wilson Wondered Why We Were Wildly Whooping on Wordless Wednesday

First, in answer to Monday's post, Brobdingnagian comes from Jonathan Swift's book Gulliver's Travels, as some of the commenters correctly mentioned. It is a fictional land occupied by giants and is one of the places visited by Gulliver when his ship is blown off course. Maybe better known to most is the land of the Lilliputians? As a child (and avid horse girl!) reading this story, my favorite of the lands visited by Gulliver was that of the Houyhnhnms, a realm of highly intelligent equine beings.

WHAT?!

Is that better?

A Jimmy-ism

It's always good to follow up Wilson's big day with something about Jimmy. This little guy is chock full of personality, charm, and amusing little quirks. However, it can be hard to catch on camera....

One such quirk happens just about every morning. When I get up, the boys of course follow me down stairs. Thus begins the wait for breakfast. A wise person once told me to never, ever feed dogs their breakfast as soon as you get up. If you do, you will create little monsters that will devise ingenious ways to wake you up earlier each day in hopes of speeding up the meal delivery. So my guys know they are going to wait through coffee being brewed, the kitchen tidied, computer time, etc., before there is any hope of breakfast.

To kill time, they watch out the back door for any trespassers. We have a veritable wildlife super-highway just beyond our fence. On any given morning it is quite likely to see deer, a fox, squirrels, rabbits, a groundhog, and most offensive of all, the neighbor's cat. If the boys aren't looking for critters, there's a chance they will doze a bit. This is where Jimmy's quirk comes in. He combines the dozing and the watching into one posture. He lies right up against the back door, and uses his nose to prop his head up while looking out the window. It reminds me of the way we humans rest our jaws in the palm of our hands in order to hold up our heads.

Here's Jimmy......