Claire's been pallin' 'round with other toddlers... YIKES!

Be afraid. Be very afraid. I don't know if you know this or not, but Claire has been known to associate with other toddlers, including her participation in "playtime" activities. In fact, she considers these other toddlers to be "friends". Claire even spent her first "playtime" outing in the living room of Marin Rios, a toddler raised by well-known Edina squirrel sympathizers! Now, I don't want to alarm you (well, actually... I do), but if we don't put a stop to this playtime activity soon, then there will soon be toddlers throughout the world joining together to tug on doggy tails and administer way-too-forceful pats on the fury heads of innocent mutts everywhere! These so-called "toddlers" show up all soft and cuddly... dance around all cute and silly for the grown up humans... then, when nobody's looking, they smack the sh!t out of the nearest dog. Have you ever had a toddler pat you on the head? If not, just imagine a tiny hammer crashing down on your skull. It hurts.

So, why do I bring this up today? I'm sure you think it has something to do with a certain VP candidate with nice gams and a folksy speech impediment spewing smears linking a certain presidential candidate (did I mention he's black?) with a 1960's-era domestic terrorist. But actually, I'm writing about Claire's toddler network because it's recently come to my attention that there's both outdoor and indoor toddler training facilities in Chaska. The photo at left happens to be about 1.5 blocks from the front door of our new house, and Claire wants her buddies to come visit for toddler training. And when it's just too cold to train outside, the City of Chaska has a family playroom with an indoor play castle. Luckily for me and my canine comrades, there's an off-leash bark park located at the Carver Park Reserve a few miles away from our new house. So, at least we'll be able to practice counter-toddler insurgency maneuvers to better protect ourselves from fists of fury administered by cutesy little humanoids.

Speaking of cutesy, following are some pictures of Claire and her new friend, Carlee, from their time training a couple weekends ago at The Eagle's Nest Toddler Training Facility in New Brighton.
Here Claire's pointing out the "How to clobber your dog" diagram in the Toddler's Manual of Pet Dominance.
UPDATE - I just posted my analysis of last week's VP debate. Read it at my other blog HERE.