February 2, 2013

White Dog and Steve were on Team A; Puff and YoYoMa on Team B as we lined up to play the White Dog Army version of "Putting Away the Toys." It was like on of those TV game shows from the '70s where two families were pitted against each other to accomplish some task within a certain time frame.

In our case, Team A was attempting to put the 14 bazillion dog toys littering the living room into the toy basket in the bedroom. Team B's job was to thwart their effort. The clock was set for the five minutes Steve had as a break from his final class project.

Steve scooped up the first armload of stuffies from the hearth and walked calmly into the bedroom. He turned to discover YoYoMa and Puff right behind him. Each of them grabbed a stuffie and rushed back into the living room. White Dog barked and paced across the doorway attempting to block their return.

On his second trip, Steve dropped giggling eggplant (on purpose as part of WD clever plan or on accident?) which turned out to be a distraction to YAWD as he was heading back into the room with two more toys in his mouth. At the sound of eggplant, he let go of his prize and stopped to give the purple stuffie a few shakes and nibbles. This allowed Steve to grab the additional loot and head toward the toy basket.

White Dog grabbed the tail end of Snakey as Puff dragged the green serpent by its head and stopped SAWD's forward motion. There was growling and tugging as each White One tried to gain control. Finally, Puff dropped her end and ran back to the basket for another treasure.

Steve scooped her up and carried her to get the toys under the front room watching chair and hurried back toward the basket. "FOUL!" cried YoYoMa. Steve was penalized three stuffies by Oso who had been refereeing the action. "Unfair play," he ruled.

During the penalty discussion, Puff sneaked back into the living room and gathered together a small stash of the remaining toys. White Dog found her lying on top of them, growling a challenge, and holding her ground. WD rushed into the bedroom with Pumpkin and right under Yo's nose dropped the orange plush globe into the basket just as the buzzer sounded.

"Time!" Oso woofed. Judges Quinn and Nuka were called onto the field to render a winner but were more interested in the new bag of pumpkin/peanut butter treats they discovered. I opened the bag...and suddenly NO ONE cared about the game...and Steve went back to his project.