Pumpkins with Puppies

Pumpkin carving has always been a big thing at our house. The kids love to do it, and it’s been a fun tradition. Even in the middle of all the crazy going on, we’ve been trying to stick to what traditions we can. Trick or Treating is sadly out this year, as are Halloween parties for the most part. But pumpkins? We could do pumpkins. (We did Halloween sugar cookies over the weekend, which are also always popular.)

Some years we’ve all worked on really elaborate pumpkins. I know there have been times when the kids spent a whole ton of time picking out their designs and figuring out how they were going to do them. This year . . . was not like those years. For as much time as you’d think we all have, staying home as much as we do, the actual amount of time we have seems to be much, much less. I know that I feel fairly overwhelmed at the moment, probably because of all the time I ended up feeling existential dread. (Maybe if I booked myself some time to do that each day, I could stay on top of everything else?)

In any case, the plan was to just do something simple. Classic jack-o-lanterns, right? Done in an hour of family togetherness. That seemed very straightforward on paper, but we hadn’t taken into account the newest member of our family.

The moment we cut into the first pumpkin and Ferris caught a sniff of the seeds and guts inside, he went into what can only be described as pumpkin mania. He simply had to eat that pumpkin. It became his whole reason for existence. At first we just tried to hold him back with a leash, but he was barking, lunging, desperate for just a taste. We took him into a different room and closed the door. We took him outside. We took him upstairs.

He. Was. Crazy.

Typically, his memory for something is about five seconds, so those seeds must’ve smelled really strong, because it didn’t matter where we took him, he still wanted to go back there. Now. Finally I googled the question to see if we could just him go wild. Sadly, Dr. Google said pumpkin innards don’t do wonders for puppies, so that was a no go.

Family togetherness isn’t quite the same when you’ve got to tag team a raging puppy, but we still made do. In the end, the pumpkins got carved, and we let Ferris lick the floor to clean up after the mess. He found that a fair compromise. Still, I’m hoping that next year he’ll have learned a bit more self control. If he hasn’t, I think we’re going to have to carve the pumpkins in another county or something.

Anyone else have any pumpkin-obsessed pooches?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Like what you’ve read? Please consider supporting me on Patreon. Thanks to all my Patrons who support me! It only takes a minute or two, and then it’s automatic from there on out. I’ve posted the entirety of my book ICHABOD in installments, and I’m now putting up chapters from PAWN OF THE DEAD, another of my unreleased books. Where else are you going to get the undead and muppets all in the same YA package? Check it out.

If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.