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Health & Fitness

Mailman Mike and the Great Biscuit Caper

DogSpanky and DogIlsa do what it takes to get biscuits!

DogSpanky here, saying hello and checking in with all of you. Needless to say, I'm so happy that spring has arrived! What spring and the nice weather means for me is more time outside in the yard and longer walks with my human and dog sister Ilsa (she is also adopted). The springtime brings more green grass to pee on, more car rides in the country, and more swims in the ocean. It is also a glorious time to hang out in the back yard, bark at the lawnmower, and devour messy bones that are verboten in the house. And my most favorite thing of all is making Mike the Mailman happy, even though I know my human doesn’t enjoy it.

Just like every dog, I do my best to please and as a rule, I'm not a pushy guy. I was trained to be a good boy and not to charge at or chase people who walk up the driveway. Especially since I weigh 98 lbs., and some humans are scared of me. My sibling Ilsa also has a lot of physical presence, and is quite imposing as a 85-lb solid black German shepherd. Simply put, the two of us are hard to miss. 

One spring day several years ago when we were outside in the yard, we saw our new mailman Mike drive up. He left the truck and walked up the driveway to deliver the mail. And since we'd never met him, it was at that point that we decided to say hello. Being good canine citizens, we approached him slowly and politely. However, despite how low-key we were the minute he saw us he reached frantically into his mailbag and threw us a couple of biscuits. Then he ran away.  Wow, a couple of biscuits when we hadn’t even done any tricks! I’ll say it again -- free biscuits without any begging! What was up with that? 

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Ilsa and I were quite curious about his behavior and so Ilsa, being the intelligent dog that she is, suggested that perhaps we should be proactively polite and do something to earn the biscuits. Ilsa went onto to reason that because the mailman rewarded us for moving towards him, maybe if we moved towards him even faster, that we would get an even bigger reward! Of course I was concerned since this meant “charging” him, but as Ilsa pointed out, we dogs don’t always understand what you humans want. And so we shouldn’t ask questions but just give it a try and see if we got rewarded.

Therefore, the very next day when the square white mail truck came rolling up the street and parked in front of our house, Ilsa and I were ready. We waited and waited, and then the minute we saw mailman Mike step into our driveway -- we immediately charged him at top speed! Top speed I tell you and I even threw in a few big barks to let him know how hard we were trying. Sure enough, he instantly froze in his tracks and started throwing biscuits at us -- lots of biscuits! He seemed so overwhelmed with joy that he could barely move! He was completely pale but still managed to keep the biscuits coming! So while I have never seen a human act quite that way, he must have been incredibly happy since the biscuits never stopped! It was glorious! Unfortunately our human came running out, apologized profusely, and made us go in the house. Even still, it was just so awesome!!! 

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What a wonderful spring day it was and ever since that time, whenever Ilsa and I see a mailman we do our very best to charge him with all our might. They always reward us with biscuits and so I know for sure that it's the right thing to do.  I really love giving the mailmen what they want, love making people happy, and of course, I love getting biscuits. Springtime really is a win-win for us all! 

With love and friendship,

Spanky

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