Free to a Good Home

I'm kidding. Kind of. Well, I did start writing the ad in my head. Hold on, full story ahead.

This is Tucker.

We don't know what he is. We adopted him from a rescue organization. He was one of fifteen puppies. He's supposedly a Rat Terrier. Which, as my neighbor says is a "very unfortunate name". You guessed it, she's not a dog person. We're pretty sure he has some Italian Greyhound in him. Whatever he is, he's fast. See his tail in the picture above? Well, it's wagging. It's always wagging. He's a happy dog. Loves people. He's always moving, and wagging, and wiggling, and loving people. Except when he's snuggled up next to one of us on one of his couches. They're no longer ours, we just get to rent space on them.

Anyway, here's another picture of him.

This is what he usually looks like: (And wow, look at the sad, post-frost state of my Hostas behind him. Ew.)

It's a brisk fall day here in Minnesota land. Sunny, the air smells like leaves and fall and apples, and the trees are glorious in their pre-winter fashion show. I've been cleaning the house all day. I mean, cleaning as in soaking the nonskid bath mat and taking a Q-tip to the shower stall doors. I don't know what's wrong with me. I should be jumping in leaf piles and skipping through an orchard with a quaint basket of apples that I just picked.

A peek or two at the dogs, while I was running around the house, had found them either comatose or laying in the sun in the back yard. We have a handy dandy dog door that makes it very convenient for them to go in and out a million times a day to chase squirrels and hopefully do their business.

This is what Tucker did today while supposedly scampering through the back yard:

And he did it several places in the yard. Not just digging, he was trenching. And I think the little beast wiped his paws before coming in because, thankfully, there are no muddy paws or tracks of dirt across the kitchen floor I also cleaned today (I'm not well, obviously.)

He's never dug before. Never even ventured into the sandbox that Young One now only uses when we mention getting rid of it. We do have a mole problem in the yard and I do distinctly remember a day last winter when he was trying to catch a mouse in our basement. He chased the dang thing upstairs and I spent the afternoon acting like a sissy ninny, sitting on the back of the couch while nervously laughing and crying into the phone to Hubby. (I'm rodent-a-phobic. I seriously had to use Lamaze breathing when Young One got a hamster. It's the first time Lamaze actually worked for me!)

We think he was trying to dig to get at the little critter who was innocently burrowing under our grass. If that's the case, well, he did a good job of it. Now, how to fix the mess?