Abandon hope all ye who enter here!

Kassa has been rather blasé about the whole "build a sun room" project.  Well last night his entire perspective on the issue changed.   You see, a sun room under construction is not just a place for sunning oneself during the day.  It turns out that it is also a bird trap.  I have chased about 4 or 5 out of my house since the process began.

Yesterday when I arrived home from work I let Kassa out of the family room to roam the house at large.  I heard some fluttering in the kitchen.  Kassa was on the job.  This was what those hundreds of hours of ball chasing was training for.  The bird was rather flustered at flying up toward the windows and floated down near the floor between attempts.  Clearly it had no idea of the speed of my boy.  Kassa pounced and snagged it out of the air like a dog to a bouncing ball.  I immediately yelled "DROP IT" and was pretty impressed that he did!  I scooted him off to the other room and went to see if his prise was just stunned.  Unfortunately Kassa's bite force was to much for the little guy and I watched him slip into the next world.  Kassa feeling extraordinarily proud of himself later when up stairs for some exuberant play with his stuffies.

You would think that birds would be on high alert and would have communicated to each other about the perils of the sun room.  This morning however I woke up to the sound of fluttering in my bedroom.  One of our feathered friends had snuck in the sunroom and, in efforts to escape the glass cage, had worked its way upstairs.  Kassa was asleep on his favorite monochromatic chair and watched me hopping around the room in my underwear trying to use a shirt to net this bird.  After four or five minutes of this he decided it was his turn to show me how it is done.  He got up, stretched, and then 3 rooms and 30 seconds later there were nothing but tail feathers sticking out of his mouth.  

The level of determination and intensity that he brought to the task dwarfed mine by one hundred fold.  Now I told him to drop it again, which he did eventually, but the level to which he consumed the poor little guy made it harder for him to give it up.  Now secretly, or perhaps not so secretly now,  I am very proud of him.  He caught these birds that had invaded our home.  He dropped them when asked and I didn't have to chase the fool things around for 20 min.   Kassa has become ball hunter, ball herder and, in as many days, now is a two bird dog.  Happy days are here again!

Conversation

Kassa: Dad, the state of affairs here has been kinda sketchy lately.

Dad: How so?

Kassa: Well first of all what is up with the house.  Someone pulled out a wall and now everything is a mess!  There is a bit more space now but its cold in the kitchen and you said this was going to be done a month ago!

Dad: Well I noticed that you have been in the new area sunning yourself during the day and enjoying the 180 Degree view of the back yard,  but I hear you on the amount of time.  Thats the way things go though and when it is finally done it will be nice.

Kassa: Who told you such lies about me sunning myself?

Dad: You left your teddy bear on the blanket.

Kassa: Someone else must have left it there.  Well thats not all.  I've been chatting around and evidently you helped set up a training seminar with Jen Bachelor on March 5th.  All the other dogs are talking about how they learned to fly, breath fire, and order pizza to be delivered.  Now I don't remember any such seminar.  What happened!?!

Dad: Well yes. From what I understand it was a fantastic seminar.  I think the variety of skills the other dogs are chatting about may be somewhat exaggerated.  The dogs people were very very happy with it.  We couldn't make it ourselves due to a last minute emergency.  I'm sorry you had to miss it.

Kassa: Another thing.  Where the heck were you Saturday, and what about my grey play on Sunday?  What is going on?  I heard you helped run a Judo tournament.  Why wasn't I invited. I could through those guys around better than anyone!

Dad: There was a Judo tournament on Saturday.  A couple of years ago I wrote some software to handle all the registration and bracketing for the competition.  It is tied to scheduling and scoreboard software which I also wrote.  I couldn't really bring you because I was there from 7:00am until about 10:00 pm.  We had about 245 entries and fought well over 400 matches split over two mats. The facility was great, and spectators were also able to view the matches from the balcony.  If I brought you, all the kids would have been wanting to pet you all the time, because you are so good looking.  The goal was to keep the hundred kids at arms length so I could help run the show.  Besides, didn't you get to spend the day with Mom?

Kassa:  Well yes, and she is superior to you in just about every way imaginable. But you throw a ball farther...

Dad: Well while we are on the whole ball thing.. Aren't these pics of you early Sunday morning, chasing down a ball at the baseball diamond?

Kassa: Well it is true,  BUT THERE WERE NO OTHER DOGS THERE THIS TIME!!  That's just not fair!

Dad: Well Kassa.  I'm going to share a phrase my own mother used to tell me time and time again.  "Who ever said life was fair!".