Let Me Pick Your Brains . . . . Canine Style

If you don't care much for dogs,
you can skip today's post.  
Not that you need my permission to do that

Because it is about this guy,

our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel,

Dylan DiPoochy.

 And these guys,

Dylan's beloved Alligator-Dinosaur-Dragons. 

We are not entirely sure which species these little stuffed toys represent.

Hence, the hyphenated names.

Since adopting Dylan during Hurricane Sandy last October,

our house has slowly filled with stuffed dog toys.

Dylan piles them up on sofas, and lies down on top of them.

He takes them for walkies in the yard, sometimes forgetting one

and rescuing it, dirty and bedraggled, hours later.

The only things he'd rather snuggle with than his toys

are his people and, sometimes, Gilda The Red, his Cavalier companion.

Luckily for Gilda and for us, he doesn't chew us open and pull out our stuffing.

Most of the time, when you find Dylan, you also find at least one.

Two.  Three.  More of his stuffed toys.

Some of Dylan's stuffed toys are quality items.

They have survived pretty much intact.  Most of those still have their guts.

But the little Alligator-Dinosaur-Dragons

are in the 2 for $5 bucket at the PetCo checkout counter.

  

Not really your quality items.

But Dylan loves them.

And we have managed to keep him from dining

on the white fluff he pulls out; thank goodness he's more interested

in the eviscerating than in the ingesting part of this process.

Which proves what those of us who shop for bargains,

and haunt thrift shops and secondhand emporiums,

are probably born knowing:

You can't judge the value of something by what you pay for it.

It's a rare picture of our Dylan that doesn't include at least

a glimpse of one of these little green toys.

So one may not have its snout, another may not have the top of its head,

and the new one will be similarly customized by our ferocious pooch . . . 

but they do look well loved, don't they?

By the way, during the photo shoot for these three toys, above, 
there was a quite frantic little dog bouncing up and down, up and down, 

at the side of my desk, worried that his little pals had disappeared forever.  

He got them back.

And so far, New Guy has not had a lobotomy.

May all of us find bargains that we cherish, 

and that amuse and comfort us!  -- Cass

Gilda thinks there was far too much talk about Dylan today.