Winston the Terrible...

Okay, so I don't think Winston is terrible, but his reputation has been slammed pretty hard with a couple of his outbursts. And I get it.

He's big.
He's scary when he goes all Cujo.
But he's ours.

We love him and have been working with him really diligently. And believe it or not, he's incredibly sweet. We've recently been on the receiving end of some slanderous gossip regarding our pup and I think I could handle it if it were my girls talking about it amongst themselves without the presence of yours truly, but it wasn't MY girl friends but a bunch of guy friends. Yeah, I didn't expect them to sit around gossiping either. Guess it's called something else when guys do it. Whatevs. The point is the conversation ALLEGEDLY didn't only encompass our pup's behavior but "concern" for Shawn's responsibilities should Winnie actually hurt someone. Now I'm nothing if not sensitive and have been known to take things out of context.

Blink
Blink

What?

Well I guess what got me was the fact that Shawn is probably the best problem solver I've ever met and cares more about the well being of his friends and family than anyone I've ever met. Meaning, he actually loses sleep trying to figure out our situation with Winston and has stopped at nothing short of finding a trainer 4 hours away to help us. I just felt betrayed that a friend of Shawn's would ever even think he was sleeping on the job or for one minute would put anyone in a situation that was dangerous. Not only that, but say what you want about ME but he has never nor will he ever, ever say anything about you he wouldn't say to your face. He's got THAT much integrity, ESPECIALLY when it comes to these guys.

Anyway, now that I've gotten that off my chest I can move forward and let go of the bad energy I've been harboring. Mostly in my shoulders. I think a massage is in order. Y'know one of those nice Swedish ones that make you feel like you've had a lie in for hours and are so completely relaxed. Wanna go ride bikes?

So I'll leave you with a situation I recently came home to. If you haven't been to our home yet (RUDE!) then you should know that the kitchen, living and master rooms are separated from the 2 guest rooms (YEP I said 2, what's your excuse?) and garage with a breezeway. When it's raining Winston takes up camp in the hallway and garage just past the breezeway. He happily greets me with the wag swinging of his tail at the door. On this particular day I opened the door to love on him but when I looked all they way down the hall I saw this:

My jaw dropped and stuck to the ground before I could reprimand him or stop him from pridefully running to the ever-so-fun project he had started while we were away. So proud was he that he ran back to me looking like this:

Um. Yes, that IS an entire un-opened roll of paper towels in his mouth. And oh was he ever so pleased with himself. I laughed as I cleaned up the mess and couldn't WAIT to show Shawn the pictures when I got home.

I love my dog.