We were tagged by Ludo to design a list of ten honest things about Katie the devil dog..er Sheltie. Katie has flatly declined to help with this list. She is patently ignoring me; now that she has finished barking at the garbage truck out front and the trio of squirrels out back she has collapsed in glorious exhaustion in the foyer. So I will take this time to squeal on her:

• * Katie likes to sleep on top of pillows. Preferably on pillows on top of furniture. Most especially pillows on top of king size beds. And in the middle of the bed so that no one else but her gets space. She likes to lay kitty-corner so that she takes up the most amount of space possible. Which is quite a lot considering she is a small dog.
• * She will make the rounds daily, maybe hourly or even every few minutes of all closets to guarantee the doors are closed. If they are not closed she will pick the choicest piece of clothing or footwear and prance about the house with it. If it is underwear she will place it adoringly in the middle of the living room as a prize. She knows instantly if a closet door has been opened in any part of the house and will within minutes arrive to show off the gifts of her plundering.
• *Katie hates Hates HATES squirrels and cats and people walking on her road and trucks and anything that moves outside unless she has given prior permission to be within her eyesight. She will bark until she scares them all away. And then she will nap; the better to gain strength for the next potential attack on her property.
• *Katie is a pig.  She will scarf down her dinner, lick the bowl clean to hide any evidence and then go find human #2 to ask for her supper.  “Please please please feed me,” she whines, “Human #1 NEVER feeds me and I’m just starved!  I haven’t eaten in MONTHS!”  If she pulls it off and human #2 feeds her (again) she will scarf down dinner #2 without any problem.  She would probably eat herself to death.
• *At school Katie prances around and does her obedience exercises perfectly while looking adoringly at her Mama.  At home she pretty much ignores any direction from Mama, being that Mama is too far down the family power hierarchy to pay attention to.  Certainly Mama is well beneath Katie’s powerful position in the family!
• *When called by her humans because she is barking, Katie will bark back until it’s an lose-lose proposition and the humans give up.  Katie always has the last word.  If she’s picked up in an attempt to quiet the barking, she will lick the human’s face all over until we are laughing.  It’s her secret weapon.
• * Katie barks hysterically, in a very menacing way and flings herself onto the bodies of anyone who accidentally sneezes while in Katie’s house.  This comes as a startling surprise to visitors, and is a constant embarrassment to her parents.
• * Katie also barks hysterically whenever the tinfoil drawer is opened, and increases her frenzy if the tinfoil box is actually removed from the drawer.  Heaven help us if tinfoil is pulled from the box.  We are working on this, with a bag of treats in the drawer.  If she’s good she gets a treat, but that generally only happens if  her Dad is in the room.  If it’s Mom trying to use tinfoil, well…Mom’s on her own.
• *Don’t even get us started about the vacuum.  It has bite marks on it and Mama is afraid Katie will break a tooth trying to kill it.  However, progress has been made.  After an initial bit of barking and lunging, if Mama ignores her, she will slink away to another room and give up and Mama can continue to clean the floors.  It’s all so exhausting for both of us.
• *Sometimes (OK, a lot of the time) when Katie wants attention she will bring her ball or toy and drop it at our feet.  If that doesn’t work she’ll go to the front door and cry, which generally means she has to go out.  So out we go, where she will spend innumerable minutes sniffing around at all the excciting things out there.  But not go to the bathroom.  Hmm….inside we go where the cycle will repeat itself until we get down on the floor and PLAY!  Playing only has to take a few minutes until she’s satisfied.  You’d think we humans could figure it out.

Looks innocent, doesn’t she?  Don’t be fooled.  She’s plotting.