Paradise ponders, despondent border collie edition...

Paradise ponders, despondent border collie edition...  It's a beautiful morning here in Paradise: scattered clouds in a blue, blue sky, snow-capped mountains all lit up around us, long shadows on the greening valley floor.  It's the kind of a morning that makes us say that we live in a postcard.  For my younger readers, here's what a postcard is.  The photo at right is someone else's photo from an actual postcard of Cache Valley (where we live).

This morning I fed our four dogs, as always.  From their behavior you'd think we starved them for weeks in between feedings. :)  I feed them in a particular order: Cabo, Mako, Miki, Race, as once they've learned the order they all behave better.  If I feed them in random order, they'll all squabble for the right to be first.  Because poor well-behaved Race is at the end of the line, he gets to watch me feed three other dogs before it's finally his turn.  At that point he's always a drooling bucket of despondency.  Even worse, from his perspective, is that I always make him sit and stay while I put the food bowl down (to protect my hands from accidental injury when he attacks the bowl).  He can't eat until I release him from the stay.  The first photo below is what he looks like every morning after I put the food bowl down while he's still in a stay.  He's totally focused on my lips, waiting for the word “okay” to come out.  He's also drooling about 4 gallons/minute.  The second photo I took approximately 3 picoseconds after uttering that “okay”.  About a third of the food is already in his stomach. :)