Mistletoe is still ruling our hearts (and occasionally our laps!) and is getting noticeably bigger by the day. She’s already able to put her nose over the puppy penitentiary and I suspect it won’t be long before she susses out she can topple the thing and escape. I don’t think it’s going to last as long as I thought it would because she’s too darned clever by half.
There’s no getting round the fact that Mistletoe is a very clever puppy. She’s already learnt a few commands and tricks and really picks up on new ones pretty quickly. We’ll see how long that lasts when puppy stubbornness kicks in! 🙂
Today, she decided she wanted to spend some time at the table whilst Katie and I were playing a new card game Julia had gotten me for Christmas called “The Fox in the Forest”.
It’s actually a lot of fun and seems deceptively simple…three suits of 11 cards and the play is very similar to spades. But the odd-numbered cards have special powers that can dramatically change the course of play in the middle of a hand. The fox is the number three card and can change the preferred suit…by mutual consent referred to as the “Biden” suit rather than the usual name that starts with a “T”. Other cards can force you to play the one of the suit if you have it or your highest card if you don’t.
Even the scoring is nuanced…you can score maximum points for the hand if you take the most tricks but if you run up the captured tricks and take 10 or more, maximum points are awarded to your opponent for being “humble” and you get a goose egg for being “greedy”. So there is definitely an element of strategy in sluffing cards, particularly if you’re loaded with powerful high cards!
But all in all, a good day for the “asynchronous learning day”…even if a certain someone made sure her cuteness and adorableness was front and centre. 🙂
