Did you know schnauzers are "huntin' dawgs??"
I didn't either until this past Easter morning. Every year, when the Easter Bunny comes to our house, he loves to hide eggs for Maddie to hunt. He hides them all throughout the house and Maddie has to go searching for them.This year proved to be no different than any other year, with the exception that there were LOTS and LOTS of eggs-- so many so that Maddie finally just hiked up her nightgown and made a makeshift bowl with the material in the front and started filling it up. I was giggling because she just kept saying, "Wow, mom, he brought sooo many eggs. I must have been really good." ("Or E.B. just forgot which house we live in," I thought to myself.)
Finally, the hunt seemed to wind down. Maddie returned to the front room, where she dumped the contents of her nightgown onto the table and began inspecting her booty. I continued to grin as I watched her shake her head in disbelief at how much candy she had just scored.
As I sat watching Maddie, I could see out of the corner of my eye, Zoe, our mama Schnauzer, creeping slowly into the front room, with her ears pinned down—dead ringer for, "Hopefully, no one will notice that I'm feeling guilty about something I've just done." "Mamaaa?" I asked. Zoe stopped dead in her tracks and dropped a Hershey's chocolate egg
wrapped in bright pink foil out of her mouth onto the floor and then
froze. Maddie busted out laughing, and I followed suit. Well that must
have given Zoe the 'all-clear' because she leaned down to take the egg
back into her mouth. I jumped up, "No, no, no," and scooped up the egg before Zoe could retrieve it. Laughing, I patted her head, and said jokingly, "Good little hunting dog."
In the mean time, my sweet daughter decided she had so much candy, she was going to share it. So as she set out to go to each of our neighbor's homes, I went up on my balcony, outside my room to watch as she proceeded to knock on their doors, and offer them Peeps and chocolate eggs. As she segued from one house to the next, she reported up to me what people opted for, or when--as unbelievable as it seems, "they didn't take any!!" Like what fool would turn down Peeps or chocolate??!!
As I'm cracking up at my daughter, the door-to-door Easter candy peddler, out walked Mama Zoe onto the balcony with another Easter egg in her mouth! She dropped it at my feet. This time the tin foil had teeth marks engraved in it. So I couldn't tell if Mama Zoe was getting braver or if she simply wanted me to remove the wrapper for her.
When Maddie finally returned home from her quest to share her treasures with the neighbors, I told her how Zoe must really be part retriever--and, again, I patted Zoe on the head, this time saying with a thick Suuthen drawwwal, "Yup! Seems we got us here a reeal huntin' dawg!" Maddie threw back her head and laughed and mimicked me as she patted Zoe on the head, too. Then Maddie looked at me and asked incredulously, "Where is she finding these, mom?"
Honestly, I couldn't figure it out either, because Maddie had already spent a good part of the morning thoroughly probing the house. I even followed her during one of her final sweeps, and being that I've been around some twenty-nine years (give or take a few), I've seen most all of E.B.'s hiding places. But because we were so perplexed by Zoe, we decided to peruse the house one more time. It kind of felt like a Winnie-The-Pooh story adventure, what with Maddie, me, Mama Zoe, and Harley (I think he decided he wanted in on some chocolate action, too.) all trekking room by room, searching high and low for anymore rogue Easter eggs.
After an intense and thorough search, we finally satisfied our minds that we’d located every egg. So, we retired to the couch. I was pooped. Maddie was wired—perhaps it's plausible a plethora of Peeps caused the problem. Maddie kept asking me about E.B. and, “How does he go to all those child’s houses in one night, mom?” Tired of the questions, and knowing it really won’t matter what I say, I respond, “Sometimes he gets Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy to help him.”
Silence.
Ahh, bliss. Sometimes it pays to fabricate false truths.
And just when I’m about to drift off to a nice Sunday nap, Maddie busts out laughing again. I open my eyes to see Zoe with—you guessed it—another chocolate egg in her mouth!!! And that’s the day we learned that schnauzers are true huntin’ dawgs. I think I’m gonna ask my broker, Steve if he’ll take me on his next pheasant hunt and see how she does….
