Go, Dog. Go!

Lately, my friends have all posted photos on their blogs of the exciting things they have going on in their lives. Josh and Clara both attended pumpkin patches. Josh says "hot" in reference to candles, and Clara's latest video makes it look like she will start sprinting as soon as she figures out how to walk without holding her mom's hands. Anne-Marie is painting the walls and getting her husband to hang light fixtures in the new townhome they just purchased.

I have been reading and writing. Billy has been working on his midterm. These aren't really Kodak moments.

However, I present to you: Oscar takes an interest in the paper I'm writing.


I took this photo with the camera that's just above the screen on my macbook. I wish he could share his feedback with me, because he seems to be giving the ideas some serious consideration. He's not even licking the screen, as he has been known to do.

In fact, Oscar is quite interested in literary studies. He sits on my lap when I read. If I'm trying to type with the laptop resting on a pillow on my lap, he insists upon crawling onto my lap, under the pillow and the laptop. If I sit on the couch in front of the window, where he likes to perch on the back of the seat cushion to absorb the sun, he rests his chin on my shoulder as if he is reading over it. He walks on books, lays on books, sniffs books, licks books.

In other Oscar news: Billy told me the other day that, in the middle of some commercial, a girl says "silly" with the same inflection I use when I yell his name to get his attention. (We live in a 3 story townhome, where apparently this happens more regularly than I realized.) The other day he was working on his midterm, and he thought he heard me yell his name, but then realized it was coming from the TV. He played it back for me on the DVR, and I agreed, it sort of sounds like me. However, Oscar provides the best confirmation. Each time he hears that line, he picks up his head or cocks it to the side and perks his ears. The commercial has come on a couple times, and each time, we re-play that line several times. Each time, he responds. One time he even did it when he seemed to be sleeping under a blanket. He is one smart dog. It must be all the reading he does.

(Go, Dog. Go! is a children's book by P.D. Eastman. I grew up on it, and I'm sure my children will, too.)