ritual and other cute but annoying dog things

Schatze has a ritual. Every night, when I am immersed in something else - be it a book, tv, email, scrapbook page, phone call - she gets up from her comfy couch nest and does the throaty bark thing. I walk into the kitchen and try to determine if she is headed towards the food bowl or the door. Even if she heads for the bowl I try to get her to go out instead, because I don't want to overfeed her. It never works, so I give her a biscuit and go back to what I was doing. This works for 3.5 minutes where we repeat the above, but this time I put food in the bowl. 5 minutes later we do the same darn thing, but this is when she does want to go outside. We do this every day - sometimes twice.

Duncan and Maggie were over today becuase my mom felt sorry for me and came over to help me clean. Every time I picked up the vacuum cleaner - whether I turned it on or not - Duncan started to bark madly. This startled and confused the hell out of Schazte, who ran to the door thinking we were under seige. It was cute once or twice, but I clean in bits, so by the 7th time I was mad...