Weapon of Mass Distraction

Once or twice a month, my parents make the 6-hour drive from their house Up There to their house Down Here; and if they plan to stay for more than just the weekend, they bring along their two dogs, Fritz and Samantha. These are not fit-in-your-purse type dogs--Fritz is an elderly German shepherd, and Sami is a colossal Alaskan Malamute--so they become, as you might imagine, difficult to entertain while crammed into the back seat of Dad's company car. I've never experienced it firsthand, but Mom claims there is nothing quite so offensive as dog breath in your ear for six hours. I believe her.

A few months ago, on one of these drives, Samantha let out a little yelp: "Rrrf!" After a few seconds, there was another "Rrrf!" And Dad, unaware he was making one of the most fateful statements of his life, said to my mom, "Maybe she wants a treat." Mom tossed a treat back to Sami...and, sure enough, a minute or two later..."Rrrf!"

Pause.

"Rrrf!"

Pause.

"RRRFF!"

Dad (laughing): "She wants another treat! Throw another one back there."

You can see where this is headed: cue the montage of yelps and treat-tossing for the next five consecutive hours, with sporadic refusals and declarations of "No more!" that were soon overturned in favor of, "Oh, just take one and BE QUIET NOW!"

As Mom told me this story later, I shook my head ruefully. "Didn't you ever take basic Psych?! Random reinforcement. It's Vegas for dogs--will she get a treat this time? Let's pull the lever a few more times and find out! You're training her to be annoying!"

If only I had heeded my own advice! Our own Catey-Pup doesn't make many car trips, and the sting of our own 6-hour road trip with the girls last summer keeps us from straying too far from home since; but somehow, in the past few days, I've managed to turn Ellie-Bug into my own little Samantha. She's already a Cheez-It fiend (they say little girls are made of sugar and spice, but we're fairly confident ours is made mostly of cracker crumbs) and stands at the pantry door yelling "Craw?? Craw???" ("Cracker?") umpteen times a day, just like her cousin Brandon did 12 years before her. All it took was one fussy drive home and my bright idea to start handing back Cheez-Its to keep her quiet...and a monster was born.

I'm not sure which is more dangerous: driving while trying to hand 287 individual crackers to an intermittently-screaming child, or keeping both hands on the wheel while she yells "Craw? Craw?! CRAWWWWW?!?!?!" for 20 minutes straight (often accompanied by a random, equally loud self-written song courtesy of Keira: "When you get HURT/Your mommy will fix it with a Band-AIIIIIIIDDDDD/But sometimes it still hurts/And parties have streamers/And cupcakes and ballooooooooooooooooons....."). What I do know is that the sheer force of her fuss, combined with her excruciating cuteness (see below), makes her a definite Weapon of Mass Distraction!