Priorities (What Trumps What with My Dogs)

This seems like a useful list to begin and hopefully to maintain.

It comes from what just happened outside: Petunia and I were playing frisbee (frisbee trumps treats for P). I had a sense that the neighbors were outside next door, which usually means their rottie is there too, but instead of returning inside I decided that a rousing game of frisbee would be a neat way to practice being in the yard simultaneously without fence-fighting (something P and the rottie regularly do, always with the same progression: the rottie watches us through the fence, P detects it, P charges behind the bushes against the fence, loud fighting ensues, somehow it gets broken up (I like to think that my calling her away is what finally makes her break off, or even that the neighbors' calling their dog off does it, but I suspect sometimes P just stops when she feels like it), P scampers away from the fence, tail high, looking triumphant and jolly. Needless to say, this behavior is on the short list of things I'm supposed to stop.

* * *

PETUNIA'S LIST:

• Rottie at the fence TRUMPS frisbee.
  
  
• Rottie at the fence TRUMPS splashing water (i.e., the promise of swimming and splashing games).
  
  
• Frisbee TRUMPS supper.
  
  
• Ball TRUMPS frisbee.
  
  
• Mom clicking-and-treating Buddy outside TRUMPS hiding-under-the-bed.
  

BUDDY'S LIST:

• Supper TRUMPS Petunia-watching.
  
  
• Sitting TRUMPS swimming.
  
  
• Click-and-treat games TRUMP frisbee or ball.