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Last night, as every other night, we let Moxie out to pee before bed. He couldn't have been outside for more than a minute before we started to get worried. He never takes this long. Megan picked up Ollie — because if you're not paying attention while you stand with the back door open he'll sneak out between your legs — and poked her head out the door to call him. Almost immediately we could hear a faint squeaking. She scanned the back yard to try and spot him — an almost impossible task when it's dark, because the light sucks (note to self: new flood light for back yard?) — and thought she saw him in a nearby corner, but he wasn't responding to her calls and even bribes with treats; a sure sign he was doing something he shouldn't be: usually either eating poop or killing something. Megan was already in her pajamas so she told me to get my shoes on. By this time I was already on my way out the door. I knew what was happening. I found Moxie in the corner of the yard where the squeaking wasn't as faint as before, and he didn't even look up when I patted him on the back. He was "playing" with some yard guests. I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him away from the corner. He had something in his mouth, perhaps a mouse. I told him to drop it, thankfully he did (intentionally or not) and I dragged him unwillingly into the house. I explained what I saw to Megan — that it was very small and looked like it had a long-ish tail. I figured it was a mouse, but there was no question that it was injured. We debated over what the humane thing to do was. If it was injured an unable to move, the best thing would be to kill it. The only things I could think of were to try and break its neck, or to stomp it — neither of which I have the stomach to (easily) accomplish. Thankfully I wouldn't have to try. Megan got some shoes on and we went out to check out the damage. The mouse wasn't where I remembered Moxie dropping it, so we checked back over in the corner and found him crouched up against the house. He looked terrified and covered in slobber, but considering that he made it all the way back to the nest, he had a chance. Further inspection of the area with a flashlight yielded two dead baby bunnies under a bush. Our mouse friend was a bunny. I picked up the two dead bunnies with a ziploc bag and put them in the trash, and we decided to see if the lone survivor would make it through the night, and check on him in the morning. Sleeping wasn't easy. I had just handled 2 dead baby bunnies, with soft fur, squishy bellies, and flat little ears like clover leaves. Try getting that out of your head sitting in the dark in silence. He didn't make it.

There are a lot of photos I took this week that I like a lot, so hopefully you don't mind me going a little nuts here. My Nephew with my Father In Law, Christmas morning.

My Mother In Law reading to my Niece, Christmas Morning.

I spent a lot of time this week working on my manual-focus skillz. You can't always count on auto-focus to get exactly what you want within a second or two, so you need to be ready to flip into manual focus and grab that odd shot before it disappears. (Not that the screen was going anywhere…)

This week Moxie joined the ranks of the Sith. Word around the water-cooler is that they have better dental and vision coverage.

Meanwhile, Ollie got something new to climb on… and won't even get squirted with the water gun for it!

Megan took this final picture, so I can't take credit for it… but it definitely deserves some attention! Good job, Peanut!

If you like my "Weekly Winners" photos, go check out some of the pictures posted by others. They are all linked at the bottom of this post, and more are added throughout the day.

Let me preface this by saying that we are not getting rid of Moxie, not particularly upset with him, and not considering putting him down. It's just a topic on my brain right now, mostly because I just read Jessica's post about her dog Boomer. (And hence the title of this post!) Moxie has always been just a little bit aggressive, as long as we've had him. He is, of course, a shelter dog – we got him from the Humane Society – so we don't know with 100% accuracy what breed he is (Lab mix. Everyone has an opinion on what with: Chow, Pitt, etc), and we don't know where the aggression comes from (certainly attributable to his previous owner). We do know that he is a big dumb lug, and we know that with absolute certainty. His paws are somewhere between the size of a small child and a Geo Metro. His passion is chewing. When left to his own devices outside, instead of chasing butterflies or trying to eat bees (which he has been known to do!) he would much rather lay in the shade and chew on a log. The only toy to date that he hasn't destroyed is a solid Kong-rubber ball, which can often be heard bouncing down the stairs or hallway, again and again. By and large, his worst problem is his paws. There's some sort of trauma there, and he doesn't have any problems letting you know he doesn't want you to mess with them. This makes trimming his nails quite a chore. We've done probably close to a hundred hours of dominance exercises – both of us – to establish that we are in control of him, not the other way around; and when we would trim his nails before, we would lay him down on his side and hold him in one of those positions. Still, he would growl and try to snap at you. We've since bought a mesh muzzle that we put on him for our own safety while trimming his nails, and should probably put on him more often so that he isn't conditioned to hate it. (We do some, but not enough, to be fair to him.) It also doesn't help that the way I have to sit to hold him in the nail-trimming position isn't exactly comfortable on my hips. When we got him, we always said that the first time he drew blood he was gone. And to be honest, that time has come and gone, for both of us (I'm pretty sure). I have a scar on my left hand on the outside of my thumb about 3/4" long where his tooth scraped me while I was grabbing his snout to stop the snarling during a nail trimming. I don't recall the circumstances of the time he drew blood on Megan. What I do recall is a very stressful week after that discussing whether or not we should have him put down or send him back to the shelter, and lots of tears. Oh god, the tears. In the end we decided that he wasn't necessarily to blame for either incident: I probably jammed my hand into his mouth while reaching for his snout. I think we decided that as long as he behaved and only had this problem with his paws and didn't show any aggression towards children, we could live with it. We agreed though, there are no second chances when it comes to kids; and we train him hard to behave well… but like I said, he's a big dumb lug. He doesn't know his size or strength, he's wound tighter than a 3 year old on a pot of coffee, and he really wants to PLAY! Of course this makes me worry about how he will act when we have children of our own. When they come home from the hospital they're not going to be much bigger than some of the toys he's ripped to shreds. And though I am a little scared, part of me knows that there will be a rough patch in the beginning while we're teaching him not to go near the baby, and I have faith that he will learn appropriate behavior, and then he'll be fine… Until it crawls, and we get to do it all over again. And then it walks. And then it talks. And then it wants doggie rides!