Early yesterday morning I was peacefully eating my bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats when I hear Copper out in the backyard barking her face off.  This has started to be too much of a regular occurrence these days, so I decided to go take matters into my own hands.  Spring Break or not, I don't need my neighbors whispering behind my back about the crazy dog that wakes up their children all through the night and early morning with her incessant barking.  Plus, my dog training podcast explained that you can be sure who is really the boss if your dog will come inside upon your calling her to do so, especially when already distracted.  This was going to be a big moment for Copper and me.


Well lo and behold I yank open the back door with authority (as much as I could muster in my glasses, t-shirt, PJ pants and socks in sub-50 degree weather) and notice that Copper isn't just barking with abandon but is intensely focused at the huge, 100+ year old white oak tree in our back yard.  Needless to say my calling her name did nothing to distract her from that tree (I've decided that for now I won't take this as a failure at being the boss...read on).  So I follow her gaze up at the tree.  Everything is a wee bit hazy because a few months ago Copper stole my glasses off the bedside table and did some decent damage to the lenses, which I refuse to replace because I don't wear them enough.  Anyways, like I said, things are hazy and I'm not sure what I'm seeing but it is definitely a large animal deftly climbing up the giant oak tree.

I'm a sucker for drama so immediately I think it is a baby black bear.  How cool would it be if Copper had tree'd a black bear???  She would be the hero of the neighborhood.  Clearly my glasses are more scratched up than I thought because I finally focused in on the animal's big bushy tail.  Not a baby bear.  But definitely a big something, and I'm leaning towards raccoon.  And it was climbing that tree like a monkey!

I did a little raccoon research and apparently they can live in trees, and are really good climbers.  So maybe Copper's recent non-stop barking "habit" can really be explained by her new buddy in the backyard.  I'm secretly hoping its a female and she's going to have little babies in our tree just for the thrill of it, but they are also known to be pretty aggressive so that's a downer.  I'll try to snap a picture of Copper's new buddy in the next few weeks, although apparently they are nocturnal and I am most definitely not so that might be a bit tricky....TBD!