Life According to Annie (Boo Bear) Oakley Jones

1. One's name doesn't always determine one's personality. Sometimes it does.
When Nathan and I picked Annie out of the litter we quickly came up with her name. I left our friends house singing, "I can do anything better than you." We watched our newly picked puppy fight back against her much larger brother. She was determined to win the battle. She was also determined to get out first. It was quite cute to watch her determination.

2. Have a style all your own.
When Annie was a puppy her two big ears didn't look so big because they lay flat against her head. Several months after we got her, I noticed that her ears started to stick up. For months I taped pennies to the ends of them to try and "train" the wayward ears to lay down. All my hard work did no good. She refused to allow her ears to stay down. That should have been a warning to me from the beginning. Annie was not going to be a laid back dog that simply did what she was asked to do. She had her own ideas.

3. You are always the biggest no matter what that other dog says.
Annie has "big dog complex". Maybe we are similar in that aspect. She always sees herself as bigger than she is. She truly believes she is bigger than every dog she meets. I try to explain to her that some dogs can eat her in one bite, but she just doesn't believe me.

4. Enjoy life to the fullest.

5. Always take time to enjoy a belly scratch.

6. Why be quite when you could be very loud?

7. Look for the opportunities in life to bark. They are always there.

8. When there is a "will" there is a "way", and there is always a "will".
This last philosophy brings me to the reason I am writing this post. We came home from Church today to find several chip bags littered across the floor. Annie is amazing in her ability to find and eat hidden foods. From the beginning of her life she has always been able to eat food out of bags, wrappers, and containers without eating the coverings. We don't know how she does it. The first time we saw this amazing ability of hers we came home to find our floor littered with little silver wrappers. I had a bowl of chocolate kisses sitting on our coffee table. Annie found the joys of kisses. Amazingly enough she didn't eat any of the wrappers. She vomited chocolate all night but was not harmed in any other way. Chocolate remains one of her favorite delicacies.

One day when I left for work, I accidental left my lunch bag on a chair. That evening when I came home, there was a small, snout sized tear in the bag. I found all the Ziploc baggies opened, empty, but not torn. I didn't find any of my lunch.

I normally leave my purse sitting on the couch. There have been several incidents of missing food that I didn't discover for awhile. She is a sneaky one. She can dig through my purse without dumping the purse over to find her treasures. She has found M&Ms from a plastic egg, junior mints from their box, fasier mints from a Ziploc bag, and endless snacks for Brenna through her three years. You would think I would learn to stop leaving food in my purse.

As you can see, today's incident is not an isolated one. We aren't sure how she even got the big bag of chips off the counter. It must have fallen down. She opened the big bag with a snout sized hole then continued to rip the perforated opening. She delicately stole three personal size bags of chips opened each back without tearing it at all. Not sure how she did that either. There were no holes in the individual bags. There were no crumbs left over. At least she cleans up after herself and only leaves the bags that are uneatable.