Good Count, Bad Count

After hearing some stories last night about naughty newfs, I got to thinking mine is amazingly good. That is, when he's good. Yesterday was an example of his angelic behavior.
I take The Count pretty much everywhere. I even take him to church (he sits in the truck while we are in for 45 minutes, then we take him for a walkie around town). I took him grocery shopping yesterday, as I normally do. He takes the cargo area of the station wagon, and the groceries go on the back seat. We have a cargo barrier, so I know he can't get to the groceries if he wanted to. Yesterday I took the truck. This means no cargo area, no barrier. Nothing to seperate The Count from the goods. I arrived at the store pretty early, got a nice spot near the sidewalk, "primo parking." I ran in to get the week's worth of grub while the Heavily Upholstered One sat in the truck. On my return I loaded the parcels into the truck with The Count, and looked across the lot at the Walmart Parking. I had to make a stop at the Wally to pick up some goods, but the lot was filling up fast. Hmmmm. I decided to leave the Newf, groceries, and vehicle right where they were and run over to the Wally on foot. Faster than finding parking, that's for sure. I told The Count I'd be right back and shut the door, ran over to finish the shopping, and returned in about 20 minutes. You are thinking, "I can't believe she left that beast in the truck with groceries! Didn't she have fresh meat? Fish? Loaves of bread? Vegetables? Is she out of her mind?" Well, when I returned, all was exactly as I had left it. Orion never touched a thing. I really didn't think he would, he doesn't even take his dinner until I tell him what to do with it ("Eat it!"). When he's good, he's so good.

All things have their darker side, and my angelic one is no exeption.

He has a job, a very important job which gets done every morning. It is his job to bring down the newspaper. He takes great pride in his job, and if he drops it, you can forget about reading it, because he will not let anyone pick it up; he will try to pick it up himself, which usually results in it being ripped, muddy, and disassembled. He takes his job that seriously.
Let me paint a picture of our daily routine. Up at 5:30 -6am, I make coffee, then take His Highness out for his morning duties. He has a pen by the front/side of the house where he tends to his needs. The pen is far too big for a lavitory (we thought he might like a pen to go out and play in, but he rejected it for that purpose), so when he goes in his pen in the morning, he can spend a good deal of time looking for "The Ideal Spot". I wait outside the pen, watching the sun rise. From there we walk across the yard to the driveway and half-way up the driveway (my driveway is a hill, half-way up the driveway is the top of the hill). He sits at the top and waits for me to walk down to the road and retrieve the paper from the tube. I bring the paper to him, he takes it and we race each other back to the front door (I even win, sometimes!). He carries the paper in the house, hands it to Daddy, and gets a cookie for a job well done.
This particular morning Daddy had to leave for work early, so I was pressed for time getting him ready. I took Orion to his pen, and instead of waiting by the pen, I snuck off to get the paper. When I retrieved it and came down the driveway, I stopped where he could see me, and I could see him exiting the pen. I called him, "Where's my baby?!" and he spotted me, I said, "Orion, Come!" and he took off at full speed toward me. Now how do we all stand when we tell our dogs to "come"? Right, bent over a bit with arms open wide. That's how I was standing when he ran full speed into me, his concrete head hit me right in the chest, sending me airborne, knocking me to the ground, feet in the air. From there he decided I must need help, so started licking me, which got me rolling down the driveway trying to get up (and away from the slurps), with him trying to "rescue" me. Did I mention I was also wearing a skirt?
I was so glad hubber was still in the shower and did not witness this scene. I'm sure he would never let me live it down!