Muddy for nothin'.

You can't tell me dogs have no sense of humor.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Snow, like a lot of things -- TV series, workplace love affairs, comments threads, all-you-can-eat Buffalo wing night -- may start off delightful and end up disgusting. Here was the backyard situation yesterday morning:

What you see is muddy turf with patches of snow and ice. Most of the snow melted in the warm weather this weekend, but the areas that had been pressed down by feet (human, canine, or other) had turned into ice slicks, upon which my boots could find no purchase. When I took little Nipper dog out back to play, I knew was going to wind up looking at the sky, with muddy pants, if I was not careful.

Now, about those funny dogs of mine.

I knew older dog Tralfaz could pull jokes when one night I sent him off the porch to go pee and he paused, then immediately bolted around the back of the house. I followed, afraid he'd caught the scent of a skunk or something, calling his name. By the time I got to the backyard he had completely disappeared. Fearing he'd run into the woods, I walked around calling him for a while -- only to find him later grinning on the porch, where he'd gone after running around the house. I could almost hear a Scooby snicker.

He's tried that since but now I'm onto him.

In the yard yesterday, when it was time to put on Nipper's leash and bring him in, Nipper decided to bite the leash and try to pull away. I managed to plant my feet firmly in all that muck, refusing to let him get free. This is how it played out.

The thing is, he never lets go. When you play tug with him, you may distract him to get him to let go, or you may win the fight and pull the toy free, but he never just lets go. Yesterday he let go. I hit the mud hard.

You can't tell me dogs don't have a sense of humor, and a good one. Our nearest relatives may be primates like chimpanzees, but their idea of a good joke is to throw fecal matter. Dogs can do better pranks than that.

As I think about it, though, it occurs to me that comments threads may indeed be proof that chimps are our closest relatives.