Mission: Impoochable

Cue the Peter Gunn theme music. Exterior: Night.

We had our Chocolate Lab Mooch for about 2 years now. He’s always been pretty normal, but we recently adopted a sister for him, Belle, who is a Yellow Lab about 6 months old. Since then, he’s changed.

Not in a bad way. He’s become more playful. Like a puppy I guess you could say. He plays with Belle constantly and looks like a lost pup himself when it’s time for her to go back into her crate for awhile. The most significant change though, has been recently when we let them out in the backyard.

Belle is just a puppy. She’s in a hurry to get everywhere and everything is interesting. She darts out the back door and flies through the yard like a kid with a sugar rush on Mountain Dew and Red Bull mixers. Her tongue hangs out the side of her mouth, ears pulled back for “aerodynamic styling” and she chases and barks at the neighborhood cats, or the grass if no cats are around.

Mooch however, has gone from being his simple humdrum self to Mr. Lab. Mr. Mooch Lab, K-9 Special Ops. We’ve established that his coat is chocolate, so it goes without saying that in the black of night, he’s no where to be found. But even during the daylight hours, the dog pulls off some amazing “stealth” ability. Mooch walks the perimeter of the house, never the middle of the yard. That would give away his position. Instead of just walking on the outside of the bushes, he weaves his way in and out of them. Presumably to throw off anyone following him.

Much to my dismay, we must also be at war with whatever “threat” is out there, because he and Belle have dug trenches to hunker down in when weaving through the bushes just isn’t enough. I keep filling them in and he keeps digging them out.

All I can picture in my head during working hours is him and Belle in some sort of covert ops meetings during the day, running CAT scans on my computer while I’m at work.