The Diggingest Dog

Max the dog does everything with a sense of purpose. He walks everywhere like he's on a mission, he monitors the backyard like he's protecting us from the doves and squirrels, and he hunts. Hunts for moles and mice as if he's not sure when or where his next meal is coming. Even though he is fed twice a day like clock work.

Here is an example of Max on a hunt:


Usually these hunting excursions happen on walks or hikes or jaunts to the dog park. And usually he isn't successful. But sometimes he is, and it's always surprising and slightly disturbing when he pops his head up out of a hole that he has dug with a live beast in his mouth. One time he even caught a baby shark. But that is another story for another day.

Things were unusually quiet around our house this morning. The normal routine is Max wakes up and demands to be let out sometime between 5:30 and 5:45. This is to patrol the backyard to make sure the doves and squirrels are not planning some sort of coup. Then, he comes back inside sometime between 6:00 and 6:30 to make sure that we are getting up.

So, I get up at 6:30 to make coffee without a prompt from Dog. As I do so, I realize there is no Max lying beside the bed. No Max resting on his cozy chair. No Max to be found. Actually, I think to myself, I haven't heard Max bark at the doves and squirrels for quite some time. And then I look outside. His head buried in the ground, dirt flying, much like the above picture.

Noticing that the plant he's digging around is starting to fall victim to Max's one track mind of "Must. Get. Beast." I coerce him inside with the promise of food - hoping to distract him enough that he'll forget that he's on a mission to capture the beast beneath the surface. All is well and good, except that I forgot to close all doors to the outside world. He escaped back outside to complete his mission.

The plant used to look like this:


Now it looks like this:


Max didn't capture the beast, and now we have to buy a new plant. But at least he's happy.