As you can tell by past posts, Riley is an, um, unusual puppy. And just one of the different and cute things he does is that he plays Santa year ‘round with my stepdad.
How does he do this? Well, for some reason unknown to us, Riley loves to carry items from throughout the house and give them to my stepdad. We didn’t teach him this. He doesn’t chew up the items. And he only does this with my stepdad.
To date, Riley has carried the following things to him and presented them, tail wagging, as though he had just found the Holy Grail: shoes of all kinds, pillows from the couch, recipes that he got off the kitchen table, a bill that he snagged from the table as well, a book, pens (he loves finding and taking pens to him), a blanket, coasters from the living room table, a $20 bill (thank goodness he didn’t chew on this!), coupons, a decorative Victorian fan, a screwdriver, scissors, an advertising circular (as if to say, “Hey, I’d like this for Christmas, grandpa!”), a purple sparkly Christmas ornament, and, brace yourself, a coffee mug…
Yes, I’m serious. He carried a ceramic coffee mug over to my stepdad. And one thing this dog does NOT need is caffeine. No Grande mocha latte with a shot of beef jerky for him…
What’s so weird is not only that he carries this stuff to my stepdad, but also that he gets ahold of it in the first place. We don’t just leave everything lying around here. But Riley is sneaky. He got the coffee mug out of a box on the floor that was full of items to go to a local consignment shop. He must have stuck his face in, grabbed a mug, shook the newspaper off it, and then trotted through the house to my stepdad to give him this “gift.”
And we’re perplexed as to why he does this only with my stepdad. He never brings strange things to my husband or me. Just to my stepdad…
So if anything is ever missing from our home, we know where to go—straight to my stepdad’s coffee table.
