"Is that a MAGIC FOUNTAIN?"

Yesterday, Olive and I went to visit our cousins and she discovered the joys of outdoor tabletop water fountains. Oh yes, this pooch immediately zeroed in on the water running down a jade-colored globe, hugging its contours like Marilyn Monroe’s pantyhose. This deserves much closer inspection, thought Olive. So of course, although there’s a nice clean bowl of “French” water in a white ceramic dish just a foot away, Olive proceeds to stick out her tongue and start lapping water from the fountain’s bust. “OLIVE STOP. THAT’S RECYCLED WATER. I DON’T NEED YOU GETTING GIARDIA AGAIN AND SURELY YOU DON’T WANT THOSE PARASITES PARTYING IN YOUR INTESTINES AGAIN.” This doesn’t work. I have to gently but repeatedly push her away from the “magic waterfall,” which she continues to return to again and again throughout the afternoon. You’d think she was a dying woman crawling on all fours across the Mojave desert, all the while regretting the peanut butter sandwich she just ate. Olive disappears for a few too many minutes and I find her in a narrow strip of grass between the fence and the garage snacking on a rotted tree limb covered in lichens. Hopefully she won’t start growing patches of fungus anywhere. She leaps into the raised flower bed and starts sniffing around. “That’s where the chipmunk lives,” says MaryAnn. “That’s where it USED to live,” I mockingly reply. Olive starts digging furiously through the cedar mulch. You’d think she was a crazed spelunker trying to claw her way to the earth’s core. “HEY DAINTY FEET…. GET OUT OF THE FLOWER BED BEFORE YOU CRUSH THE PANSIES TO DEATH.” She soars through the air and lands on the deck…right next to the magic water fountain. She sticks the landing like gymnast Mary Lou Retton and looks at me quizzically as if to say, “ALRIGHT, I’M HERE. WHAT’S SO IMPORTANT THAT I HAD TO GIVE UP A CHIPMUNK FOR IT?” But really, I know she’s patiently waiting for me to turn my head so she can sneak a drink from the magic fountain. It’s always a battle of wits with this dog.