Trick or treat. October 17, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in pets, wit and wisdom.Tags: blog humor, Hallowe'en, trick or treat
1 comment so far
Trick-or-treating adults aren’t exactly PC. But that doesn’t mean that our freind Ben and Silence Dogood don’t talk about dressing up as Dracula and Morticia, suiting our black German shepherd puppy Shiloh up with some batwings and a red-lined satin cape, and heading out in search of booty. We don’t, of course, but that’s because we don’t think we’d get anything worth eating, and probably a ton of abuse from outraged homeowners. Doesn’t stop us thinking about it, though.
And since today is, as we learned on MSN, a holiday called Sweetest Day, let’s celebrate by time-traveling back to a Hallowe’en where you were really looking forward to all that trick-or-treat booty. Suppose you could fantasize about a trick-or-treat extravanganza where every treat was safe—no sadistic perverts sticking razor blades in apples—and the bounty you brought home was limited only by your imagination. No need to worry about calories or cholesterol or the Glycemic Index or tooth decay. The Health Police are on vacation. You can have whatever you want!
Taking that trip back in time, here’s what our friend Ben and Silence came up with in our ideal Hallowe’en treat bags:
* Atomic Fireballs. Hot, hot, hot! As adults, we understand that hard candy is hard on your tooth enamel, so we avoid these cinnamony delights. But if all bets were off, we’d be grabbing a bag in a heartbeat.
* Malt balls. Ditto for these. We love them!
* Baby Ruth bars. Even the baby-size versions are fine with us.
* Caramel apples. Oh, yum! Silence’s favorite, especially Granny Smith apples coated with buttery real caramel. None of that weird red stuff for us!
* Butterfingers. Our friend Ben has a weakness for these chocolate-covered crunchy toffee treats.
* Caramel corn. Please, please, give us tons of this buttery sweet popcorn treat, preferably with pecans and almonds.
* Cinnamon-sugar almonds. Hot almonds coated with cinnamon and sugar are so good, we’d eat them every day if we could find and afford them! But the secret is, they do need to be hot, or at least nice and warm.
* Toffee pecan shortbread. Our all-time favorite.
* Symphony. This weirdly named Hershey’s chocolate bar is actually our favorite. It combines three faves, chocolate, toffee, and almonds. Yum!!!
* Free pizza coupon. Oops, just thought we’d mention it. We’d be happy to enjoy a nice, hot slice on your doorstep, too.
* Doughnuts. Powdered sugar and cinnamon are our favorites, unless you really want to go for it and give us some apple fritters or cream-filled, chocolate-coated long johns.
* Hot buttered popcorn. Give us plenty of butter and salt and we’re good to go.
* Goo-Goo Clusters Supreme. This delicious confection, made with pecans, marshmallow cream, caramel, and chocolate, originated in our native Nashville. We’ll be happy to take a carton!
* Honey-roasted cashews. Speaking of nuts, we love cashews, but honey-roasted cashews are our all-time favorites. Yum!!!
* Dried pineapple, cherries and cranberries. Oh, gee. Dried fruit is so incredibly good. Since you asked, we’ll be happy to take some dried Medjool dates, candied ginger, and Australian apricots, too.
* Cheese. Oh, did we forget to mention cheese? Cheese sticks, those little individually wrapped cheese rectangles, little cheese rounds. Don’t they go beautifully with dried fruit and nuts (hint, hint)?!
* Bones, chew toys, and sweet potato treats. Uh, these aren’t for us, but a certain batwing-festooned puppy would certainly appreciate them.
Silence says that’s probably enough. We suggest that you print out this list and stock up accordingly in case you see us coming on Hallowe’en night. But if you’d like to add a few treats of your own, feel free! We’d be only too happy to see them.
Who really respects the earthworm? October 16, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in critters, gardening, homesteading, wit and wisdom.Tags: bees, blog searches, earthworms
3 comments
We’ve been getting some classic reader searches recently here at Poor Richard’s Almanac (thanks, WordPress, for letting us know). A recent favorite was “how to get revenge on pumpkin smashers.” But yesterday, we had two people coming on site looking for “who really respects the earthworm.” Gotta love that!
The short answer is “gardeners, scientists, and natural historians.” (Charles Darwin, for one.) The longer answer is “anyone who undertstands the crucial role earthworms play in maintaining the fertility of the earth through the aeration of their tunnels and the rich, balanced fertilizer of their castings, which transform soil minerals and other nutrients into a form that’s readily accessible to plants and bring them up to the root zone so they’re available, not to mention that all those earthworm tunnels allow water to easily penetrate the soil and reach thirsty plant roots.” Hey, somebody did ask.
Our friend Ben has always thought of earthworms as the bees of the earth. While bees pollinate so many of our crops, ensuring our food supply and variety, from apples to pumpkins, earthworms take on soil fertility, giving every crop a great start in life. They, like bees, are our partners in farming and gardening. Our harvests depend on these two. And, like bees, earthworms gift us with other benefits: As bees contribute honey and beeswax to our larders, earthworms transform kitchen scraps into rich potting soil and bait hooks to catch fish.
Who really respects the earthworm? I do. You should, too. In a sense, we owe them our lives.
What’s your favorite scary movie? October 16, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in Uncategorized, wit and wisdom.Tags: Hallowe'en, Hallowe'en movies, horror movies, scary movies, suspense
4 comments
Having posted earlier this week about how much we hate slasher movies, our friend Ben, Silence Dogood, and Richard Saunders had a little chat about which scary movies we really like. This time, we’re not talking about fun, campy movies like the Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee versions of “Dracula” or, say, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” To qualify, these movies have to be genuinely creepy and/or frightening, disquieting, disturbing. To keep this post from becoming interminable, we’ve limited ourselves to our top four. So here are our faves. What are yours?
Our friend Ben:
The Wicker Man (original Christopher Lee/Edward Woodward version, not the horrible Nic Cage “update”). This movie looks plenty campy at the outset, but then it takes a turn for the worse.
The Silence of the Lambs. Even Silence loved Anthony Hopkins’s magnificent performance as Hannibal Lecter, but she could never bring herself to watch the film again.
Mr. Frost. This little-known Jeff Goldblum classic is really creepy in the best possible way.
The Night Visitor. This is certainly one of the scariest, most amazing things our friend Ben has ever seen. A Swedish family kills a farmhand, then pins the crime on their supposedly simple-minded brother. But he’s not as stupid as they think. The ingenious way in which he manages to escape from prison and return to wreak revenge, and what happens then, is pretty much heart-stopping from first to last. If you look for this, there’s apparently another movie with the same name about the Nazis, so make sure you read the plot before you rent it. Liv Ullman and Max Von Sydow star in the “correct” version.
Silence:
Marnie. I loved Tony Perkins’s performance as Norman Bates in “Psycho,” but it’s not something I’d want to watch over and over. But when Hitchcock filmed the novel Marnie with Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren, he portrayed real fear and suspense without the slasher aspect. A great movie.
Sleepy Hollow. Okay, okay, maybe it’s not all that scary. But you knew I’d find a way to work Johnny Depp in here somehow, right? He’s just great as Ichabod Crane, giving him a Sherlock Holmes star turn. And there’s plenty of suspenseful atmosphere here, too.
The Usual Suspects. This one ranks at the top of both my and our friend Ben’s “great films of all times” lists. As many times as we’ve seen this movie, it still has us on the edge of our seats, and I still can’t watch it if I’m home alone. Great performances all ’round. And it takes a great movie to singlehandedly add a villain of the stature of, say, Dracula to the lexicon. “The Usual Suspects” pulled it off with Keyser Soze.
The Virgin Spring. Ingmar Bergman isn’t exactly known as the Hitchcock of Sweden, but he sure managed to make his share of creepy films. Maybe it’s the absence of dialogue—there’s very little in this film set in mediaeval Scandinavia—that builds up the suspense, but whatever it is, it works.
Richard Saunders:
The Prestige. On the one hand, this film about rival magicians is so campy you just want to call up the director and complain. On the other, it’s majestic. And it’s genuinely scary, with great performances all around, especially from Michael Caine and Hugh Jackman.
The Quiet Earth. The scariest science fiction film I’ve ever seen. It would be bad enough to know that you were one of the three last people left on earth. But what if you also knew the destructive cycle was coming back?
The Draughtsman’s Contract. This Peter Greenaway film seems quirky and atmospheric, a period piece set in Georgian England. Not your typical horror movie. But then, as with OFB’s favorite “The Wicker Man,” everything changes. The ending will shock you as much as it did the protagonist, wonderfully played by Anthony Higgins.
A Thief of Time. I like all three of Robert Redford’s adaptations of Tony Hillerman’s Navajo murder mysteries (the other two are “Coyote Waits” and “Skinwalkers”). But A Thief of Time made for especially skin-crawling reading, and the movie captures the creepy feeling while showcasing the personalities of the protagonists, Jim Chee, Joe Leaphorn, and Joe’s delightful wife Emma, and the lifeways of the Dine (Navajo) people. Too bad Redford didn’t film all the novels!
Okay, your turn! We’re eager to expand our Hallowe’en viewing fare. Let us know what you love and why! But no out-and-out slashers, please. Silence can’t take the nightmares!
Progress on the home energy front. October 15, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in homesteading, wit and wisdom.Tags: alternative energy, climate change, great inventions, solar energy, sustainable energy, wind energy
5 comments
Finally, there’s some good news about home energy generation that leads to self-sufficiency rather than global warming. A small step for our homes, but a giant leap forward for our climate and world.
Our friend Ben discovered this just this morning while reading a feature on MSN (http://msn.com/) called “10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009.” I had no idea what products they’d choose but couldn’t resist looking. And I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to see that both wind power and solar energy had taken great leaps forward in terms of both utility and affordability on a home scale.
The very first product listed was a home-scale wind turbine that works even at breeze rather than gale-force strength. The Honeywell Wind Turbine incorporates the generator into the blade wheel, so it produces power even when wind speeds are as low as 2 mph (opposed to 7-8 mph for standard turbines). At $5500 and 165 pounds, it’s the first wind turbine that seems feasible for real-life homeowners. (And yes, that is $5500 out of your pocket, but when we think of what we pay for fuel oil and electricity, it would probably pay for itself within a year.)
Also on the list is the Andalay AC Solar PV Panel. Our friend Ben has railed on this blog before about the expense and complication of home solar systems, which require DC-to-AC converters or all-DC home appliances (when standard appliances use AC), battery banks, and a degree in solar engineering to monitor and maintain. In the era of simple solar flashlights, solar traffic signs, solar stick-in-the-ground lights, and etc., this strikes our friend Ben as a ludicrous state of affairs.
But thanks to the Andalay panel, it looks like things are finally changing for the better. These panels incorporate microconverters, racks and wiring into the panels themselves, so they’ll power AC rather than DC appliances without the high-tech song and dance. As the article says, it’s “a big step toward true plug-and-play solar power for the home.” Unfortunately, they didn’t list a price for this one, but our friend Ben is still applauding.
The article lists a couple of other environmentally friendly inventions as well; I highly recommend it. But it’s these two that make my heart beat faster. Reading about them, our friend Ben can see a future where homes are self-powered in ways that don’t pollute our air and our world, that don’t require non-renewable fuels, that have no climatic impact. And finally, it looks like this future will arrive in my lifetime—maybe even in the next decade. In other words, in time to save us all.
Why scare yourself? October 14, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in wit and wisdom.Tags: horror fiction, horror movies, scary movies, slasher movies
7 comments
The Hallowe’en season is the traditional time for the release of horror movies, wherein deranged villains slash, torture, pursue, menace, and generally murder all and sundry in the most horrific manner the minds of their directors and writers can conceive. Our friend Ben and Silence Dogood have never understood this genre’s popularity. Isn’t real life horrifying enough?
It’s one thing if the movies are about ghosts, vampires, werewolves, zombies, or creatures like Godzilla, Mothra, and etc. Or, say, evil aliens. These monsters-under-the-bed (or hiding in the closet) presumably serve the same function as the original, and rather horrific, fairy tales, giving us a focus for our fears so we don’t carry them with us in our waking lives.
But what about all those ghoulish movies that feature actual deranged killers, psychopaths, sadists, and the like? It seems to us that too many modern movies focus on monsters that might actually roam among us. And these horrors aren’t limited to Hallowe’en fare; “Red Dragon” is an excellent example of this genre. (It’s based on a book by the same name by Thomas Harris, author of Silence of the Lambs and other Hannibal Lecter novels.) In most of these cases, the author or screenwriter goes to great lengths to show us why the antagonist has changed from an innocent child into a monster—usually the result of evil and/or twisted ambition on the part of adults acting upon a vulnerable psyche—and this back-story is a counterpoint to the excitement of the hero’s attempt to bring the villain down before even worse can happen. Suspense, terror: What more could we want?!
How about a restful night’s sleep? We live in a world where at any moment we could be smashed in a car wreck. We could inadvertently stumble on a holdup at a gas-station convenience store and be blown away. We could be the victim of a carjacking in a mall parking lot, a break-in at our home, a holdup at gunpoint as we leave a restaurant and walk back to our car. We could be raped and butchered as we jogged in a park, or ripped apart by a wild animal whose path we’d been unfortunate enough to cross. Or hurled to nevermore by a tornado or drowned by a hurricane or burned in a wildfire.
And this is America, as opposed to a country where we could be randomly siezed and torn apart, blown up, or blown away not because we opposed anyone but because we happened to be there. And we’re not even touching on poison, plague, and famine, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, or any of the other horrors that continue to haunt the human race.
We think this is plenty scary enough. We don’t really need realistic or campy bogeymen to haunt our dreams, there’s enough to be afraid of as it is. So why does it seem like audiences can’t get enough of this slash-and-thrash genre of horror? If anybody knows, please clue us in. We just don’t get it.
Smashing pumpkins. October 13, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in wit and wisdom.Tags: blog humor, Hallowe'en, Hallowe'en pranks, pumpkins
6 comments
‘Tis the season. And sure enough, yesterday our friend Ben and Silence Dogood saw the first smashed pumpkin of the year, lying forlornly in fragments with its guts spilled out along the roadside. What is it about pumpkins that make people want to smash them? And why do they feel compelled to steal other people’s pumpkins and then smash them in a public place?!
We despise vandalism, whatever form it takes. And in a world where people are starving, we hate to see perfectly good food going to waste. Why not donate those pumpkins to a food bank or feed them to your chickens or cows or, say, make a pie or some pumpkin bread, assuming, of course, it was your pumpkin to begin with? Or at least add it to a compost pile so it can enrich someone’s garden.
So seeing a smashed pumpkin always reminds us of a particularly satisfying story of revenge. Every year, Lennilea Farm Nursery, a wonderful nursery (and working farm) about a half-hour from us, holds a harvest festival, including a biggest pumpkin contest. Naturally, they dress up the place for the festival, including setting pumpkins on top of the fence posts leading to the nursery entrance. For years, vandals would come by at night and smash these pumpkins, making an unholy mess and ruining the display.
Finally, Lennilea’s owners said “Enough!” That year, as usual, they set pumpkins out on the fenceposts. But they weren’t just any pumpkins. They were rotting pumpkins. When a vandal drove by and seized a pumpkin, the trick—and the oozing pumpkin guts—were on him. Word must have spread far and wide, because our friend Ben and Silence haven’t seen a smashed pumpkin on the road to Lennilea for years.
Thinking about this always cheers us up. But what we’d really like is if every person who stole and smashed someone else’s pumpkin were forced to wear a jack-o-lantern made from a real pumpkin over their head every day for a week. (If it was their own pumpkin, but they smashed it on public property, then they’d only have to wear the jack-o-lantern head for a day.) A few hours with your face inside a pumpkin should be enough to teach anyone a little respect for other people’s property. And just think how festive it would be with all those pumpkinheads wandering around. It would certainly help us all get in the Hallowe’en spirit!
Stiiiiiink bugs. October 12, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in critters, wit and wisdom.Tags: blog humor, Dracula dip, garlic, garlic dips, stink bugs
3 comments
Silence Dogood here. Faithful readers know of my unending battles with my mortal enemy, stink bugs, here at Hawk’s Haven, the cottage home our friend Ben and I share in the precise middle of nowhere, PA. They manage to insinuate themselves into our house, then lurk unobtrusively until my attention is on something else. Then, RRRRRrrrrrBOOM!!!, they dive-bomb onto me or a nearby surface, scaring the hell out of me and providing yet another test of my cardiac fitness. Just yesterday, I saw three stink bugs waiting their chance near the front door. Grrrrrr. I hate stink bugs.
Today, however, I was thinking about garlic, not stink bugs, while writing a post for our blog, Poor Richard’s Almanac. Our local paper had mentioned a Dracula Dip Contest at a nearby garlic festival and it captured my attention. Dracula Dip! Priceless! (For recipes, search this blog for “Dracula dip.”)
Admittedly, to many people, garlic stinks. Stink bugs apparently stink if you squash them, hence the name. But I was still not prepared to go to our WordPress “dashboard stats” page and see that someone had come on our blog looking for “garlic stink bugs.” Eeeeeewwwww!!!! Let’s hope they weren’t planning to try them with the Dracula Dip.
‘Til next time,
Silence
Dracula dip. October 12, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in recipes, wit and wisdom.Tags: dip recipes, Dracula dip, garlic, garlic dips, garlic recipes, Hallowe'en dips, Hallowe'en food
8 comments
Silence Dogood here. Recycling the local newspaper, I came on a notice for the Dracula Dip Contest at the Easton, PA Garlic Festival on October 3rd. Now, how could anyone resist that, especially a bigtime Christopher Lee fan like yours truly?
Rats, we’d missed the festival, and sadly, the paper supplied no recipes. And while admittedly reluctant to go on a website with the motto “Eat, Drink, & Stink,” I just had to see if the winning recipe was listed. After all, what could be more appropriate for our Hallowe’en festivities than Dracula Dip?! Well, the official website had a great photo of Bela Lugosi as the Count, but no recipes. I was forced to turn to my old friend Google to see what “Dracula Dip” turned up. Here are a couple of promising dips that you vampire fans (or those trying to ward off vampire attacks) can try:
Anti Dracula Garlic Cheese Dip
2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, at room temperature
1/4 cup real mayonnaise, as in Hellman’s
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon parsley, minced
7-8 big, fat fresh garlic cloves, minced, or more to taste
3 tablespoons fresh green onions (scallions), chopped
salt and pepper to taste
Combine all ingredients and chill for at least an hour or overnight to give the flavors time to intensify. Serve with veggies, crackers, bread, or your favorite. [Note from Silence: From www.grouprecipes.com.]
Dracula’s Garlic Dip
2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, at room temperature
1/4 cup real mayonnaise, as in Hellman’s
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons dill weed
1/4 rap. each celery seed, paprika, and parsley
2-3 cloves fresh garlic, minced
Combine all ingredients and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving. [Note from Silence: This recipe is from Cooks.com. I have no idea what a "rap." is.]
Hypnotizing Squash Dip
This one’s from Canadian Living.com. I (Silence) like it because it’s creative and combines all the flavors of the harvest season, but mercy, it’s a lot of work for a dip. See what you think! As they say, “Keep Dracula at bay with this mesmerizing garlic-packed dip. Surround it with crispy ‘bat wings’ (blue corn tortilla chips).” Makes 3 cups.
1 small butternut squash (about 2 pounds)
5 cloves garlic (unpeeled)
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon each salt and pepper
Pinch ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon basil pesto
Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or grease; set aside. Cut squash in half lengthwise; scrape out seeds and membranes. Brush cut sides and garlic with olive oil. Arrange squash, cut sides down, and garlic on prepared pan. Bake in 350-degree F. oven until tender, 45-55 minutes. Let cool slightly. Scrape squash pulp into a food processor; squeeze garlic pulp over the top, discarding skins. Add Parmesan cheese, 2 tablespoons of the sour cream, and the salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Puree until smooth. Spoon into a shallow serving bowl, smoothing the top. If making ahead, you can cover and refrigerate this for up to 2 days. When ready to serve: In a small bowl, blend remaining sour cream with pesto. Using a small piping bag fitted with a plain tip and starting at the center, pipe into a spiral on the dip. (You can use a small resealable plastic bag with a corner snipped off if you don’t have a piping bag.)
Well, it’s a shame that the recipes of the official Dracula Dip Contest winner and runners-up weren’t listed. The three dips I’ve listed are all interesting, but the last one’s way too complicated for my taste and I can’t help but think I could improve on the first two. So here’s my attempt at Dracula Dip. You’ll note that mine includes shredded cheese because vampires are inherently cheesy, and hot sauce because, let’s face it, a good vampire is always hot!
Dracula Dip (Silence Movie Version)
2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, softened
1/2-2/3 cup sour cream
4-6 large cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 cup shredded sharp white Cheddar cheese
3 green onions (scallions), chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt or to taste (we like RealSalt, or try Trocamare)
generous splash hot sauce (we like Pickapeppa or Tabasco Chipotle)
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon (for intrigue)
1/4 cup canned pure pumpkin puree (not pie pumpkin), optional
Stir or beat softened cream cheese until smooth. Add 1/2 cup sour cream, stirring in more if needed to reach your preferred dipping consistency. Stir in remaining ingredients (except pumpkin puree), mixing well to blend. The cheese, garlic, and green onions will give the dip body; it’s not supposed to be smooth (unlike Dracula). But it will definitely have a bite! Using a teaspoon, swirl in the pumpkin puree, if desired. Do not blend, let the orange of the pumpkin contrast with the pale yellow/green of the dip. Allow to rest for an hour before serving to give the flavors time to marry.
Serve with tortilla chips, pepper strips, carrot rounds, endive leaves, celery sticks, soft pretzels, breadsticks, Triscuits, or (especially fitting) the bat-shaped crackers I’ve seen recently in my grocery as a Hallowe’en special. Or make the dip in a mini-Crock Pot, heat it on low, and use it as a fondue-type dip for Pizza Hut-style soft bread sticks. But if you order the bread sticks (and possibly accompanying pizza) delivered, watch your delivery person carefully for any signs of a cape, an unusual pallor, or fangs.
Do you have a favorite “Dracula Dip”? If so, please share!
‘Til next time,
Silence
The dog that talked. October 11, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in pets, Uncategorized, wit and wisdom.Tags: animal communication, dog communication, Shiloh, talking dogs
11 comments
Our friend Ben and Silence Dogood are used to parrots that talk. In fact, we’re used to parrots that sing the James Bond theme song, parrots that laugh like Silence, parrots that tell each other to be quiet and exclaim “Bad dog! BAD!!!” at appropriate intervals, parrots that inform us “You look green!” and order us to “Get back to work!”
But our two previous dogs, both golden retrievers, were quiet. They were hugely affectionate, wagging their whole bodies with enthusiasm when they saw us, rushing up to be petted, showing in their eyes, big, happy smiles, and gestures that they loved us more than life itself. But they never barked, much less spoke.
So we were unprepared for our current puppy, Shiloh, a black German shepherd whose vocal abilities approach our own. When we brought Shiloh home as an infant and put her in her crate for her first night with us, we assumed she might cry. We did not assume that we’d hear a range of vocalizations ranging from the “AaaHOOO!!!” of “Werewolves of London” to unmistakeable demands, not barks, but actual demands to know the whereabouts of her parents and birth family. “Bellows” and “moos” would have best described the uproar we were confronted with. Shiloh was instantly christened “The Mad Cow of the Serengeti,” a title she’s retained to this day.
Shiloh’s vocalizations have increased in subtlety as she’s grown and interacted with us. In addition to giving us a hysterical “Can I get you some therapy?” look, head tilted sideways and eyes regarding us dubiously, Shiloh has perfected an almost unending variation of warbles, whines, questions (these always rise at the end like a human’s), commands, demands, and parodies. Her vocal range is not only extensive, it’s almost intelligible as English in certain instances. We know that German shepherds are widely recognized as highly intelligent, but folks, this is scary.
Our friend Ben and Silence have read that smart dogs can recognize a significant number of words in the language of their owners—I can’t recall how many, but in some cases it’s over 100—and Shiloh definitely knows the ones that pertain to her. Words, phrases, and entire sentences prove no challenge to her. And it’s only too clear that she expects us to be able to interpret her utterances as well. “Help, I drank too much water! Take me out now or else!” “I think it’s time for a treat. No, not that treat, the sweet potato treat, please.” “Is that a fresh egg I see?” “Please get up now so I can get a little attention.”
The length, variation, and complexity of Shiloh’s utterances is dumbfounding to our friend Ben and Silence. She will give vent to a long comment, pause, just as if reaching the end of a sentence, and then begin the next one. While it’s true that she’s perfectly capable of a volley of deafening barks if she sees another dog (especially if she’s in the car, with particularly unfortunate results in terms of our instantaneous hearing loss), these dog-human communications are most often in a conversational tone, only rising in volume if she really has to go to the bathroom and we’re not getting there fast enough.
We’re beginning to think we brought home a whale by mistake.
Have you ever had a talking dog?
