Miss Julie Anna's Place Setting

Miss Julie Anna's Place Setting

There is a popular misconception that all older Golden Retrievers are sad or lonely. I am really telling tales here that aren’t my business to share, but the truth is, we just look that way to get you to give us some peace. You see, when we are puppies, you are forever throwing a stick, playing tug o’war, while blaming our puppy energy! Just because we are young and still learning about the world – with the occasional puppy mishap, you say we have excess puppy energy!

I remember my biggest puppy mishap. My owner, Miss Julie Anna Bookett, had, unbeknownst to me, just brought home her third prize winning table place setting from the Lincoln County Fair. She set it proudly on the family’s dining room table – complete with it’s winning yellow ribbon – for her Mama to see. Her mama, you see, had been feeling poorly and hadn’t been able to attend the actual event.

But as I say, I knew nothing of that. What I knew was that when Miss Julie Anna had come in through the front door, she had left it ajar just a little. Now I had been outside for about a week, I’m embarrassed to admit, after having been banned for leaving a leak on the Bookett family’s hearth rug. Anyway, when Miss Julie Anna left that door ajar, I just couldn’t resist. I’d had an entire week of actual dog food and not one table scrap!

I tiptoed into the house as lightly as I could on the very tip of my nails. Any minute I knew someone could scream and I’d be banned another week, but if I could get in and get out, it would be worth the risk. I made it through what Mama Bookett called the For Yay and the Living Room, and from there I could see dishes on the dining room table. One set! Abandoned with no one there eating! Oh excitement! Plum forgetting that Miss Julie Ann had only just come back from somewhere else, I figured she’d forgotten to take her plates back to the kitchen yet again. It was a common complaint of her Mama’s.

Barely containing my excitement, I forgot to tippy toe and I bounded towards the table. Up on my hind legs, I looked at the plates, but there didn’t seem to be any food. I gave a lick or two on the top plate, but there was really nothing to taste. Finally in a stupid puppy moment, I stuck my nose into the glass to see if there was anything at the bottom.

There wasn’t, but as I tried to pull away, the glass came with me. Well there’s nothing that freaks a puppy out more than something he doesn’t understand, and that glass, well I just couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t let go. Any thought of caution or self-protection was now forgotten and I bounded about the room, trying to bark. Trying to shake that glass off from my face.

Well, in no time, Miss Julie Anna and her Mama were there. What I hadn’t seen, was that place setting? I had broken it all to pieces trying to get away from that glass. But what humans forget just about all the time, is that with every bad that comes from a puppy mishap, like Miss Julie Anna being mad at me for nearly a month and her yelling and screaming that day; a little bit of good comes too, like her Mama nearly on her knees on the floor she was laughing so hard. And her barely able to get out of bed just the day before. Seems to me I should have been the one with the shiny yellow ribbon!