There is much hooliganism in our house. Cosmo has quite a penchant for mischief. Kramer has an insatiable appetite for playing chase with his dad in the den. And Sushi is just plain surly. He likes to get involved with whatever antics the other two boys have started, or brew up some shenanigans of his own.

Here is some video of a typical day in our house. The first part is Kramer running from Dad (with Sushi chasing his tail from the back of the sofa). Cosmo used to play along, until the day he ran his knee into the fireplace… so now he immediately puts his tail between his legs and tries to “make up” with Dad as soon as the play gets started. The second clip is Sushi picking a play-fight with Cosmo, for which our little lion hunter is a much more willing participant.

Two times a day, we go through the same feeding routine with our dogs. We load up their bowls with dry food and make the dogs stay seated (Cosmo drooling all the while) until we say the word “Chow!”

Once they hear their cue, Cosmo immediately races to his bowl in a single bound and starts inhaling his food without stopping to chew. Meanwhile, Kramer remains seated for a few moments and prepares himself mentally for his next meal. Perhaps he’s saying a silent prayer, wondering quietly to himself what is on the menu, or reflecting on previous meals that were particularly tasty. But being quite the genteel soul that he is, it just takes him a bit longer to warm up to meal time. He even self-regulates his appetite, occasionally skipping a meal to maintain his lean frame.

Upon the eventual commencement of his meal, he gracefully walks to his bowl (Cosmo is usually about halfway done by this point), takes a few bites of food in his mouth, walks a few feet away from his bowl, and drops them on the ground so he can eat one piece at a time without feeling rushed. Then he gingerly returns to his bowl and continues eating, still savoring each kernel individually.

Cosmo is more of a foodie. In fact, you could say he’s obsessed. Like a shark, he explores the world orally, chewing on anything new in his path (cardboard, aluminum foil, you name it…). He’s willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get whatever food he sees. Apparently, he’s convinced that his supply is scarce. He eats twice as much food as Kramer, yet always finishes first. Then in an effort to inch as close as physically possible to Kramer’s food without actually touching it (which is against the rules), he will start drinking water out of the very edge of Kramer’s water bowl while staring intently at Kramer’s food. We call it “coveting.”

For your viewing enjoyment, here is some footage of just that.

Well, Hugo the hedgehog has gone on to a better place. Literally. Thanks Addy & family! You’re now adoptive parents of not just 3 wonderful girls, but now also a boy (hedgehog). That’s just what we needed – one less mouth to feed. And that’s just what you needed was one more!

Here are the photos of the little guy heading off to his happy new home.

(see Kramer’s Capers – Part 1 for background info to this post)

So the vet started the surgery (over 2.5 hours after we got to the hospital) and after 3.5 hours under the knife, they decided they needed to wake Kramer up. The only problem was that they didn’t get all of the pins out of him. They got 137 of the 140 pins he ate. That’s right – they decided to leave 3 in him. Not surprisingly, they wanted to do another surgery the next day (that wasn’t included in their “worst-case” estimate) to get those last 3 pins out of him. But we decided against that, and took Kramer to our regular vet as soon as he was stable and let him perform the surgery. It’s a good thing we did that – our vet discovered that one of the incisions in Kramer’s stomach was not properly closed and was leaking fluid into his body. Not a good thing. But after almost 2 more hours of surgery, our vet was able to get the last 3 pins out of Kramer and patched up the mess that was left from the previous surgery.

Today, Kramer is almost completely back to normal. The only evidence of the fiasco is his shaved belly and the scar from the incision. He’s enjoying playing and fighting once again with his brother Cosmo and muttering to everyone is his deep voice. All is well once again in the Birchfield Barnyard.