The Master Chewer

Raven is usually a pretty good girl. She loves her little routine and expects us to play our parts. During dinner (and any other meal) she sits in between Trace and I and calmly waits for any small morsel of food to fall to the ground for her consumption. Then, after Trace has gone to bed, she retreats to her pillow inside her open kennel and snores away as Kevin and I watch a show before bed. Then, Kevin will say to me; "Take your pills" and that is the words that wake her and she crawls out of the kennel, stands by the back door and waits to be let out for one final bathroom trip. Then, while she's out, I fill her food and let her back in and we proceed upstairs while she eats her "dinner". When done, she comes upstairs to join us in our room on her cushioned bed in the corner of the room and again begins to snore. It's such a funny thing to see how strictly she MUST adhere to that routine! If we try to feed her before she goes out, she won't eat. If we wait downstairs after letting her back in, she'll stand by her bowl and wait until we go upstairs to eat. Such a funny girl! One thing she is excellent at is when we leave out food or toys she's not supposed to play with, she doesn't. She has to wait until they are given to her to understand that they are hers and then she will only grab "her" toys when playing. The only exception to this is stuffed animals. She has a really hard time understanding if this particular one lying on the ground is hers or someone else's, so sometimes she'll grab it just to try. One such day that she was being really good, Trace and I picked her up a stuffed toy at the store while shopping and were super excited to give it to her when we arrived home. When we got there, she ran around excitedly and when Trace pulled out the toy, she plopped her butt on the ground in the "sit" position so that he would give her the new toy. She is so cute when she plays with a new toy! She throws them up in the air and catches them, she tosses them across the room and "gallops" over to grab them and if you throw it for her, she will jump in the air and try to cross her two front paws over one another to "catch" it with her paws. It's so funny! The one thing she does do is tear them to pieces in seconds flat. Knowing this, we try to watch her carefully when she gets a new stuffed animal and if she starts to chew, a quick, deep volume; "Raven!" will get her to stop.....momentarily. Since I think she's cute when she does most anything, I happened to snap the photo right after I told her to stop chewing and destroying her new toy and the look on her face was priceless! Of course, she went right back at it until I took it away, but I thought it was a funny face worthy of sharing.