"Are we DONE yet?"

This is what a weimaraner looks like in suspended animation. Can’t you just tell from the look on Olive’s face that she’s humoring me? ‘FOR GOD’S SAKE, DO YOU HAVE TO TAKE MORE PICTURES OF ME?” “ACTUALLY, I DO,” I reply, “BECAUSE THERE IS AN INSATIABLE NEED FOR NEW PHOTOS FOR YOUR BLOG.” As I command Olive to stay, I can feel every fiber in her body on tensile alert with the aching desire to RUN, RUN, RUN. But she sits obediently, waiting for me to release her from this excruciatingly dull three minute session. You would think I had asked her to empty the dishwasher. When Olive wants to hide from me, she runs downstairs into the finished basement. In the dark. And stands there half-hiding like an 8-year old playing tag with her friends in the backyard on a hot summer night. She waits for me, the giant silhouette at the top of the stairs, to approach her so she can zoom past me and thunder up the steps in a show of both bravado and joy. If at this moment she could speak, I am confident that she would squeal “NAH, NAH, NAH, NAH, NAH.” This time, I am somehow quick enough to catch her near the cheap cotton drapes downstairs. “OLIVE, SIT. NOW LOOK AT ME.” She hates looking at me when “she’s lost” the chase, but eventually she does it. I guess she figures that the quicker she complies, the faster she can initiate another chase. Eventually, she does thunder up the stairs past me and stands perched at the top of the landing like a Valkyrian victor. Her look of triumph is made somewhat less serious by the appearance of her ears, which are both flipped back, exposing their pink labyrinths and making her distinctly resemble a Townsend’s Big-Eared Bat.