I *may* have mentioned this before, but Wootie and TWooie are like one dog, same dog.

If ever anyone has doubted their relativity, all they’d need to do is watch them WooTWoo in action and their doubts will be erased.

They have the same feet, the same tail and pants, the same mannerisms and carriage, and lately, the same Very Bad Habits.

TWooie’s newest bad habit is to pretend he does not hear his recall.  Sound familiar?  It looks like this:

I am standing 20 feet from you, and I am wagging my tail, but I’m not looking at you, nor am I heading in your direction.

Moreover, when I start walking him down to remind him that he should come when The Food Lady calls him, he waits until I am just out a smidge of grabbing distance, goes into a play bow, and then takes off!!

Is this a genetic trait?  Holy cow, it’s exactly the same move that Wootie pulls on me!  Even worse, I have exactly the same reaction – I LAUGH.  I can’t help it.  The WooTWoo family tickles my funny bone something fierce.  No wonder I can’t train either of them to do anything.

But the Really Really Bad Thing Behaviour that TWooie has started to pull is a move that Wootie has busted out in the past as well.  You may remember it as RUNNING AWAY FROM HOME whilst walking on the property, and scaring the bejesus out of Food Lady.  This behaviour makes me cry and panic and get mad all jumbleduptogether like that.

We were strolling around the acreage yesterday, meandering through the blueberry fields and slogging along the riverside.  Then I realized that I *really needed to pee* so we hotfooted it back in the direction of the homestead. As we headed back toward home, Piper scared up an heron.  Piper, for reasons that remain known only to her, HATES herons with a passion and she took off in one direction – coincidentally, Wootie discovered a rabbit and went in another with TWoo in hot pursuit.  Amongst all the confusion and flying dogs (and the fast, knees together powerwalking I was doing) we made it back to the house where I solved at least one of my immediate problems.  The next was to go back outside and stomp my feet on the porch and demand that Wootie Come Here Right Now as he didn’t make it through the door with us.  Then I went to sit down and realized we were short one TWoo.

TWooie tends to panic when left outside – when I invite the dogs in one at a time to get their paws wiped, TWooie can’t be last or he does laps around the outside of the house barking in a mad panic, trying to find an alternate way inside.  So I wasn’t immediately worried – I figured he was probably on the other side of the house.  When calling did not make him appear, I went and looked for him, and found nothing at all resembling a TWooie.

Long story short, I had to suit up again and take all the dogs and wander the acreage for nearly an HOUR looking for the TWoo.  We did the whole pastures, blueberry fields, river walk *again* and still nothing.  It was only when I got back home to call some people to get a search party together that I found TWooie playbowing at me from the porch.

I don’t need this kind of stress!  Again!!  I know from experience that when members of the WooTWoo clan discover the joys of running off after their hunty-little noses, it just gets worse from here.

But then I remembered my secret weapon.

A couple of months ago my friend Alaska sent me a gift in the mail.

It was a present to curb the wayward habits of Mr. Woo, but upon its arrival, Wootie curbed his own habits and became a model canine citizen – or at least, he stopped running away from home.  Maybe he is psychic, or perhaps he just wanted to pass the torch to his brother.  Either way, the box has remained unopened, because I had no need to put the contents to work.  But today, I opened the box.

Mwa ha ha ha.  Take that, TWooie.

I’m suspicious.

And so you should be!!

This, my friends, is a GPS for dogs.  All I need to do is fit the collar on the TWoo, carry the little handheld doohicky with me on our walks, and I can find the little meatball no matter where he goes.

See the little anti-run-away antenna peeking out there?

I cannot thank Alaska enough.  Twice today on our walk, Twooie vanished into the ether in pursuit of something small and furry.  But no worries – he was very easy to find.

If dogs can register surprise, Twooie’s face was full of it every time I parted a clump of swamp grass, or pokey bushes, pointed the handheld unit at him and screamed “Ah HA!  Found you, Meatball!”

I’d like to go frog hunting right now.

Oh.  You still have the Find Me device.  Damn You.

Ha ha.  Nanner nanner Twooie, you just got pwned!

Poor Tweed, he couldn’t run away even if he wanted to, because he’s still relegated to on-leash walks only.  We are both getting very frustrated with this.  It seems like he’s good during the day, but as the Deramaxx wears off in the evening, the limp comes back something fierce.  It looks like we are off to the vet again, probably for x-rays this time.  Ironically, it’s the not the original leg that is bothering him, but rather the opposite one.  I could kick myself for not resting him more religiously sooner.

You suck.  Still.

It does not help that Piper keeps showing off her four perfectly functioning legs.

She’s being very ungracious about it.

What? *blink*

It looks like Piper’s going to Regionals, since Tweed’s agility future remains up in the air.

Wootie can’t believe his ears.  Although why would he?  He’s never used them for listening before, why start now?

As for TWooie’s future – I know you all want me to keep him.  Even I want to keep him … but I just don’t know.  I am smitten with the little guy, but his dog aggression really cramps my lifestyle.  We haven’t been to a dogpark in ages because I can’t bring the TWoo, it’s just impossible at this point to do that.  We’re lucky that we have all this acreage, but we want to get out there and mingle some.  I can’t even invite people here to walk with us – last week The Boy came by with Hayden and Cooper and Twoo and Coop nearly killed each other.  Twoo’s got some holes in him, but he started it.

If it weren’t for the aggression, and the spats he has with Dexter, he’d be basically perfect.

She said I’m perfect.  That’s because I am.

“Egotistical family genes?”  What on earth does she mean by that?  Why don’t you admire the dashing figure that is me while we mull that over…