The day Aspen made Grandma swear!

By Porter ~

Thanksgiving day, that one day a year where everyone seems to cook and cook forever, and then complain that they’ve eaten too much.  This year, Aspen and I got screwed. For the first time in awhile, mommy wasn’t the one cooking the turkey, apparently the traditional thing to eat on that day. It has something to do with pilgrims but, I always stop listening because I have no idea who these pilgrims are, and I really don’t care. I’m mainly just concerned about getting a bite or two of turkey! Aspen, on the other hand, is obsessed with it. A true lab, she’ll eat nearly anything and basically thinks she’s hungry all the time. For some reason we don’t understand, this year we drove with mom and dad to grandma and grandpas house but then, (!) instead of staying to eat turkey, we were locked in the room that is our bedroom when we visit and left there! Silly Aspen, always happy to please, jumped up on the bed a top our Ducks blanket as told. I caught on to their ploy at the last second and tried to turn tail and head for the door but mom snagged me and back in I went. Humiliating.

Worse, what seemed like hours passed with no sign of our family. What had we done? I thought back on all of our recent bad behavior (ok, my recent bad behavior that just MIGHT have ended in mom and dad receiving a note from the neighbor regarding my barking 🙁 ), but could not think of anything that was so terrible that we weren’t going to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving with our family!

I sniffed out the borders of the room, contemplating an escape plan, when Aspen woke up from her nap. Hungry as usual, she proceeded to start snooping in grandma’s closet and what did she find but a bag with some sort of luscious meat in it! I’m not quite sure what it was, having never tasted salami before, but we were all over it. Aspen happily ripped open the packaging and, fat girl that she is, managed to get most of it, but I did my best to participate in the find.

When mom and dad finally returned for us, all that remained were drooled upon, ripped up pieces of the wrapper and I could tell daddy was NOT happy about it. Grandma and Grandpa weren’t back yet so we jumped into the car to make our escape to the beach for the rest of the weekend.  Sadly, the treat we stole gave Aspen terrible farts! The gassy emissions, approximately every 15 minutes, caused gasps from the front seat as windows were opened all around. Once at camp mom and dad called grandma to tell her what happened. We could hear the conversation since dad had his phone on something they call speaker phone, and when grandma got downstairs to view the damage all we heard was “oh damn it!!” right before mom collapsed in laughter. Grandma NEVER swears and so I knew we were in big, big trouble now! Aspen, once again asleep, had no idea what she’d done as she snored on ~ no doubt dreaming of more salami.

The rest of the weekend was marvelous with lots of long walks on the beach, napping, and time cuddling with mom and dad. It was very cold so we got to wear our coats some of the time, which I love. I chased foam,  Aspen fetched in the ocean, and we were very lucky because we got to have a movie morning way up high on mom and dads bed. I just cuddled in, totally content to have four whole days of family time.

Luckily, the Aspen emissions have ended and I think we’ve learned our lesson. At least until next time. Now we’ll just have to make it up to grandma next time we see her!