Dam and Dummer...

I have two dogs... Sam and Summer.  That's a lie.  My FAMILY has two dogs.  Both pups have tremendously different personalities.  I will talk about them now because Sam is SO distracting as he runs around the living room chasing flies that I can't think of anything else.


Summer (Dummer) is like a shadow... She's a very loyal dog that will follow you to the ends of the earth.  And into the kitchen.  She has this thing about ice cubes - they're like.. better than Christmas to her.  Every time I head downstairs, Summer comes down as well.  She will sit at the foot of my bed until I make a move.  I typically have to assure her that I'm "Just going to the ladies room" so she doesn't follow me out.


Here's the pretty pup:

She LOVES to go outside (I just whispered it so she wouldn't hear me....). She has this thing about tennis balls.  More than an obsession.  When I stuck one of her tennis balls in my desk drawer so she would stop kicking it at me, she sat and stared at my desk drawer for upwards of 3 hours.  She likes tennis balls better than ice cubes.  And if ice cubes are better than Christmas, well... that's a lot of like!  Getting side tracked.


I usually go outside with her so we can kick around the ball.  When I mean "we" and "kick it" in the same sentence, I mean I stand at the end of the driveway and she (regardless of the presence of her electric fence collar) will stay 5-10 feet up on the driveway.  She will not give you the ball unless she's SURE you will give it back.  Definitely not good at sharing.


Aside from not enjoying to share, she also doesn't like wet grass.  It's often that on really dewy mornings I will walk out to my car and find a nice "surprise" on the driveway (be it a puddle or a pile).
That's typically when neighbor Trevor (an undersized, over cute 4 year old) comes over and says "Neighbor Becca, where's neighbor Jackie?  There's poop on the driveway and I want to show her, can I have some fruit snacks?"  I love him.  He loves fruit snacks and neighbor Jeff always has fruit snacks around for him.  Sam's Club style (the package in the link here).  That's serious business. 


Other than that Summer is pretty normal.


Sam (Dam) is obsessive compulsive about flying objects.  The first summer I was in Wisconsin, Sam was with mom and dad doing garden work.  Helping, of course.  He likes gardening.  Digging holes and "laying dirt".  But he was also simultaneously trying to play with his new BFF Benny Bumblebee... back stabbing bugger.  The bee was eventually caught and Sam got to experience his first "fly chasing heart break".  He was stung inside his throat.  (Not a good place to be stung if you ask me...)  His face was swollen as I have ever seen a puppy swell and I can imagine his thoughts 
"No more eating flies with yellow stripes and pointy butts.  Not cool."


Sweet, silly, stupid pup...

So anyway, Sam is mostly Melissa's dog.  They carry a lot of the same traits.
Though I don't see Melissa snacking on bumblebee's.  She was stung (twice) recently and didn't have the same love-hate relationship with the effects.  It was pretty much hate-hate.
*side note: I just imagined Carl laughing and Melissa punching me in the arm.  Standard operating procedure in the Grupp household.


But really, Melissa is the nicest to Sam because she's the member that mostly appreciates his stupidity and eagerness to test our limits.  Though endearing (and sometimes tolerable) they are probably the most irritating MOSTLY because he never fully follows directions. "Out" to Summer means "go to your spot and sit quietly until you're asked back in".  "Out" to Sam means "sit on the edge of the kitchen (paws on the floor, it has better traction in case something gets dropped) and stare at every bite of food going into everyone's mouth".  


Gets annoying.


Dad and Sam have the worst relationship... Dad says how much he dislikes having dogs and that they're stinky and slobbery (not true, only after a drink of water) and they poo on the driveway (50% valid... it's just Summer).  But every now and again I will see him be nice to the dogs. 
I would be confused if I were Sam... Dad yells for him to stop sniffing his dinner from 3.2 inches away and 2 hours later I find them like this at the couch.

This is a picture of Dad not liking Sam... misleading?  It's not HIS fault he's dumb... it's ours!!

Just another day in the life...!