Sometimes even silly little train of thought bloggers, like myself, experience writer’s block.  It know it’s hard to believe.  A trained monkey could write this stuff, but sadly, last night as I crawled into bed, this was the case.  No real ideas.  The tank was empty.  Tomorrow’s edition of www.CookiesbyDave.com had no theme.  No path.  No light at the end of the tunnel.  Finally, the frustrated thoughts drifted from my head and I began to head toward sleep.  Then it hit me, well more like landed next to me.  The idea for today’s post seemingly fell from the sky and hit the bed with the force of a duffle bag full of rocks.

You see, Kirby our 1½-year-old beagle has been a bit of a challenge to train (major understatement).  He does not have a mean bone in his body, but he tends to be flighty.  Sort of living life in a haze of “Did I just destroy that?” and then bounding happily off to chase faint smells left by squirrels, who had passed through the yard hours ago.  We have been trying to break Kirby of his barking habit.  We’ve tried all sorts of gadgets with limited success, so we figured we would try behavioral training.  It takes a lot of work, but when Kirby begins barking outside, as a punishment, we bring him back in.  When he quiets down, he can go back out.  In.  Out.  In.  Out.  All day long.  Tiring, but he sort of gets the idea.  Unfortunately, this greatly cuts into his exercise, where he would normally be running around outside, instead he is inside in sort of a clueless doggy timeout.  Reduction in workout time has led to Kirby putting on a little weight, so he now has the solid build of a lean doggy football player.  Not overweight, but packed in there.  The full force of Kirby’s mass can now make you sit up and notice.

Yesterday evening, we spent the night with some friends around a beautiful autumn campfire and poor Kirby spent the evening in his crate.  Returning home, he was a bit out of sorts, but seemed to settle down just fine.  After finishing a movie, we headed up to bed and Kirby trotted up the stairs after us.  Entering the bedroom, he slithered on his belly under our bed, his usual early nighttime spot, and I cuddled down under the covers to contemplate my writer’s block.  As I drifted off to sleep, with the subtle smells of campfire smoke still comforting my senses, the inspiration for the post hit me.  It almost hit Charlene, as well.  You see Kirby usually tiptoes into our bed unnoticed during the night and we wake up to find a dog curled up between us.  Well, last night, Kirby decided to throw caution to the wind and with his newly developed stocky physique, he attempted a vertical jump between us.  Like Mary Lou Retton sticking her land off the vault, Kirby plummeted onto the bed between us.  After Charlene and I landed, we realized that our furry child had briefly turned off his mind and directly violated bed time protocol.  My pup had provided me a final gift for the day, as the shattered remnants of my writer’s block lay scattered across our comforter.