A Ten Year Old Princess

My sweet Princess is 10 years old today! The years are flying by much too fast. We are going to go play in the snow today (LOTS to play in ... but it is starting to melt ...) and then will go to the Moorhead DQ for a treat. Our DQ is one of the oldest in the nation and still the kind where you walk up to an outdoor window and order. They open March 1st of every year, and it doesn't matter how cold it is, there are always people in line! (One year there were literally people standing there ... ordering a blizzard ... in the middle of a blizzard!) We are hearty folk; that's for sure! Either that, or crazy. Probably a little of both!

Princess is still able to jump up on my bed quite well, but when she's really tired, she will stand by the foot of the bed and make a little sound (soft but audible to me) that lets me know she wants me to lift her up there. The girls go to work with me on Fridays (a special treat that they love), but they are always quite tired that night as they don't get their usual long naps in. For some reason, they were especially tired last night. So I put Princess up on the bed about 8:30 and she was 'gone'. A couple hours later, I pulled back the covers to get in and it aroused her slightly; just enough to make her stretch ... and then 'thump' ... she rolled right off the foot of the bed! I jumped up to see if she was alright and she was on the floor, snoring. She never even woke up! She seems none the worse for wear this morning.

Saturday mornings are our grooming time; the girls get brushed, nails trimmed, a mini bath, teeth brushed ... and then at the end, they get a Greenie (their favorite treat and too expensive to give more than once a week ....) The only part of the grooming that they really hate is having their nails cut. Dee Dee still fights me terribly ... (often ending up in a muzzle) ... but Princess has gotten quite tolerant of it. This morning, however, she just didn't want them cut. After all, it's her birthday! She does something that I find absolutely fascinating, when I'm calling her to 'come' but she doesn't want to 'come'. She knows that what I'm calling her for is something she doesn't like. She also knows that if she doesn't come, she will get a spanking. And she also knows that my lap is a safe place ... the place she goes to when she's been naughty, or when she's hurt, tired or otherwise needs comforting. So, when I call her for something that she doesn't like, she will slowly approach me, and then when she gets just about to the spot where she doesn't want to go, she will jump into my lap. It's like she thinks if she can just get onto my lap, then she'll be safe and I won't cut her nails. Once I realized what she was doing and how important it was for her to have my lap as a safe place, I made sure that if I needed to do anything unpleasant to her, I did it off my lap and then she could come up there to be comforted afterwards. I want my lap to always be a safe place for her.