Sometimes it's a metaphor, but in this case, I mean it pretty literally. Charmin appears to have discovered her reflection in our full length floor mirror for the first time today. At first, she seemed to think it was a door-- she kept trying to walk into it, head-butting her own reflection. The mirror has some lovely nose-prints now.
The mirror is upstairs, meaning she also discovered how to go up the stairs in our house. However, she has yet to discover how to come down them. I had to carry her back downstairs twice, which she was a good sport about.
I started reading about Amish puppy mills yesterday, which is where Charmin came from. Truman's mother also was, sadly, a puppy mill dog from Arkansas. Apparently, to keep the massive groups of dogs from barking too loudly, they have a method of "de-barking" the dogs, which means hammering a metal pipe down the dog's throats to destroy the vocal chords. I respect cultural differences and all, and I get that not everyone views dogs as friends the way I do, which is fine. For some people it seems acceptable to treat them as livestock. Unfortunately, we treat livestock pretty horrendously. If they were treated like the animals on my great grandparents' farm, I could deal with it. But when they don't get medical attention for oozing sores and exposed bones and eyes falling out of sockets, and when they get carried around by the leg because the farmer doesn't really want to touch them, I think that goes beyond treating them like animals.
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