There must be a doggy somewhere. How can one 6 pound dog hog so much? He has taken over the camping chair, outfitted it with his blankie then stuffed not one, not two but three toys in it.
To add insult to injury, he grew tired of his crowded chair and left!
He is the first dog I have ever owned that was toy happy. Oh sure I had a black lab mix once that loved his Frisbee, but other toys didn't inspire him at all.
Harley on the other hand, is over 7 years old, barely six-and-a-half pounds, yet continues to spend a good half of his day exercising his toys, fighting with his toys, unstuffing his toys, chasing his toys, squeaking his toys, rearranging his toys, tossing his toys, ripping his toys, dragging his toys, shaking his toys, carrying his toys, chewing his toys. When all is said and done, he often self-soothes with a toy by sucking on it while putting himself to sleep.
Other than that, the dog doesn't do much at all.
Many of his toys come to him for free from fans or friends. Lucky dog! He does wear his toys out with his chronic knack for staying busy busy busy.
Some campgrounds have a give-away place for unwanted items. If there is a stuffed animal there, I usually bring it home for the dog.
Sometimes I get to review products provided for free from Amazon and other vendors, if they send over a dog toy or stuffed animal, then you-know-who gets to test it out.
Recently I was walking the dog at a rest area on the Florida turnpike. Well actually they call their rest areas the service plaza. Anyhow, there on the ground with an amazing amount of scattered garbage was a brand new stuffed squeaky dog toy. Didn't appear to be dirty or have any drool on it or anything. It was as if it had been dropped there brand new 30 seconds earlier.
I looked all around for another dog walker, but not a canine in sight anywhere. It was by the road, so maybe a doggy was holding his new toy out the window when he dropped it. Maybe it was a squeaky human child toy and he tossed it out the window. Who knows?
Harley spotted it and was ecstatic. So now he had another free new toy. Good grief.
Well, if anything, that makes it easy on the budget. Zero spent for the dog toys he craves (and destroys!)
I often study the garbage too, it's amazing the amount of dropped money I occasionally find. My last jackpot was four folded one dollar bills. Usually it's just spare change I find, but sometimes paper money is among the debris.
When I find all this scattered garbage, I just want to get my picker-upper stick and tidy up the place. I don't understand when or why it became fashionable to disburse garbage everywhere while ignoring nearby trash bins. In this case, the service plaza did have some garbage bins, not near enough in convenient spots, but still with a little effort, folks could have put their refuse in the provided cans, not all over the struggling thin piece of landscape in the parking area. Oh well, I should shut up about garbage.I just wish we had a tidier world to live in.
As a workamper I used to litter pick every speck of garbage out of the parks I volunteered in. The rangers in most cases didn't care because they didn't see it. Many rangers don't ever leave their trucks unless forced too. So unless it's a big chunk of garbage they don't see the little bits scattered everywhere that a pedestrian sees. Garbage for some reason just sticks out at me no matter how tiny. Just walking around most any park or campground, I see bottle tops, straws, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, all the tiny garbage folks leave behind. Of course folks often leave bigger garbage too but most camps keep the bigger stuff more or less picked up.
I have rarely set up camp in a place that didn't need tidying up. Usually someone shows up and removes the bigger pieces of garbage, but the little bits tend to be left behind for the next camper. When I leave a campground or RV park, I make sure my site is spotless with nothing but nature left behind.
At least I hope that is the way I am leaving it! I sure try.
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