From the dog kingdom, comes the finest breed for smelling and tasting things. Through the centuries Labradors have been bred to smell out animals for hunting and to feed their master's family or find the single piece of popcorn that fell in between the cushions of the sofa. Sandy was no different. She would use her keen, genetic, sense of smell and eat everything, except cold cut meats. She would eat the bread but pass on the boloney. Makes you kind of wonder about what goes into those processed meats? Like politics, processed meats look good on the outside, but you don't want to know what goes into them. The boloney would sit at her feet. Sandy would stare at the boloney for five seconds, then look at you. Look back at the meat, back at you. She wasn't going to give that another thought. Her sense of smell was certainly different then ours.

Who wants to be full of baloney? You would just stare at them too. I'll eat any piece of meat that was not processed. My favorite: pork chops, which I later found out, I am allergic to.

Mary Kay would tell me to put Sandy on a leash.

"It's spring time and she rolls her neck into everything, then I have to give her a bath", she'd remind me.

'It's so much work to bend down, grab the leash and find the ring on her collar,' I thought. "Sandy, you won't roll into anything now, would you?" I scolded her.

She wanted, "Outside"! The cries of a yellow lab could grab the attention of a hardened warrior. Jumping up and down like a Kentucky Derby race horse in the stall before the race, she was too excited about going outside to hear my words even if she could! I gently opened the sliding door about a half an inch. Boom! She crammed herself through the ever widening sliding door helping to open it like a wedge. Three inch opening became a six inch, then twelve and she was gone. Usually she would spot a squirrel and chase it up a tree. Then she would look for something to put in her mouth: a shoe, an old ball, a dried black walnut, in the fall, oak acorns or some unidentified substance that was on the ground. She was going to a party and needed something in her mouth. This was a big problem in the winter. You could never find the matching glove or shoe until spring, when the snow melted. There it was, your favorite item, sitting in the grass, soggy and ruined.

"You better get Sandy in", Mary Kay would shout over the garbage disposal. Getting up from my comfortable LazyBoy chair, I would begin the fifteen minute ritual of getting Sandy to come home. Going outside, I would begin the shouting, "Sandy! Home!" I figured the fewer words, the less confusion, "Sandy! Home!"

Finally she would arrive. This time, I am in trouble. Covered from her nose to her chest she has wiggled in some black substance that smells so bad, the air around her almost has a different color. It must have smelled good to her as she was smiling with her eyes and her tongue was hanging out while she panted. She couldn't have been more pleased with herself. Her tail was wagging like "look at me, nice perfume huh? I think it was 'My Mystery Smell' by some fancy European perfume manufacturer.

$14.95
Paperback, 6x9
ISBN: 978-159858-300-7
208 pages

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