Hi Eric,

Yes, all’s well… Story #1 for our journal:

Bubbie and the Cake incident….

It was our youngest grandson’s birthday. He requested a SMURF cake. My idea was to make a yummie blueberry cake (since Smurfs are blue). The cake I made cost about $20 in ingredients – two packages of frozen blueberries are about $12, a pint of buttermilk and a pound of butter – to name a few…plus a whole lemon and orange (peel) and a tablespoon of vanilla. BUT, I had ALL these ingredients on hand and I knew the cake would be a big hit.

The cake takes about two hours to make…it’s REALLY special. I made it using the SMURF form and it came out PERFECT – the blueberries were on the bottom, the cake was delicious and light…JUST THE THING.  I placed it on a rack to cool and pushed it as far back on the counter as possible as I know that Bubbie oftentimes “checks out” what is on the counter. Because of the blueberries being on the bottom of the cake, I placed a sheet of parchment paper under the rack. I then went to bed about the time Gabe got up (as I was jet lagged – I had stayed up all night and baked the cake during the night).

Gabe walked Bubbie and then took off for work….now the real story:

A half hour after Gabe left for work, I hear Bubbie crying outside the bedroom door. After a few hurdles and ricochets off the door, I get up in a stupor and let her inside. She jumps on the bed and snuggles for a little bit and then starts licking me to convince me to get up. She smells really good…sort of a lemony/vanilla fragrance. Finally, I get up and stagger to …. the kitchen to make myself some coffee.

I quickly see what happened to Mr. Smurf and put 2 and 2 together about Bubbie’s lemony/vanilla breath!  There in the middle of the kitchen floor, face down … is the Smurf cake. There were two big chunks missing (hmmm, wonder where those went?). Now here’s the funny part…I had enough ingredients to make ANOTHER cake – just enough in fact – even ONE extra orange and lemon.

The final part of the story – this cake was one of the biggest hits of all my cakes for taste….lesson learned: Bubbie knows a good cake is worth the effort!!!

Story #2 four our journal:

Bubbie, the Esther Williams of Israel…

Bubbie, it turns out is a lover of water. When she was VERY small, she learned to swim and climb out of the pool using the ladder (we have no shallow end steps). She was always sort of reluctant to dive into the pool on her own and especially so when there was no one in the pool. She had to be coaxed and cajoled and “encouraged” with various types of treats (steak and chicken being the best motivators). However, recently we noticed that she was pretty wet when she returned from her morning and afternoon sojourns in the backyard. Because her barking bothers our neighbor, we assumed they had been dousing her with the hose (which was just encouraging the barking because she loves the hose). So, we decided to keep an eye on things ….only to discover the following:

Bubbie loves her red soccer ball. She loves to throw it to you when you’re in the pool swimming – you are then supposed to throw it back to her and she will bounce it back to you (rather directly) using her nose or, she will chase the ball if you throw it over her head. She then tosses it back into the pool. If you don’t meet her timetable for throwing the ball back to her, she simply jumps into the pool with you, grabs the ball and climbs out the ladder with it in her mouth. To our knowledge she NEVER did this without someone in the pool…until recently.

We were watching her in the yard in the early months of the summer. It’s REALLY hot and humid here and she gets warm. So, we saw her running around with the ball in her mouth, throwing it and chasing it herself…then she did something we didn’t expect. She threw the ball into the pool by tossing her neck and hurdling it forward. After it landed…she jumped in after it, retrieved it and then climbed back out using the ladder – only to do it AGAIN!  Later we noticed that she would just jump into the pool for a swim – without the ball. She would tool around the pool for 5-10 minutes and then climb out the ladder, shake herself off and run into the house. Mystery of the wet dog solved.

Story #3 for our journal:

Ball and Bath…

Bubbie goes to Rotem’s house when we are out of town or to visit her friends, Choco and XXXX. Even though she is the youngest of the three dogs, she is the dominatrix (ha ha). Her favorite friend is Choco who is about 1/4 her weight and size. Bubbie loves to play tug on the rope. She oftentimes gets tired or playful and instead of tugging, she lays down and wants you to pull her all over the house at the end of the rope. She will even turn on her back so her tummy is up and you drag her. It’s really funny. Well, Rotem didn’t know about this trick …. when we recently picked up Bubbie, Rotem tells us her latest escapades:

Bubbie got a pull rope and played tug with Choco. The next thing they saw was Bubbie PULLING CHOCO like we pull Bubbie. There was Choco at the end of the rope, on her back being pulled around the floor by Bubbie!

The also told us a variant on the pool toss trick above. Rotem doesn’t have a pool but she has a large bath tub. Apparently she was getting ready to take a bath and enters the bathroom only to see Bubbie toss in a tennis ball and jump in after it!

Good stories, huh???