Gideon

Gideon has had a good, long life. It's about time he starts thinking about heading to the other side.  I admit that I'm ready for him to move on also.  I'm tired of all the dog hair...everywhere!  I hate that I can't go to the bathroom in the middle of the night without him panting at me to let him outside even though we both know he doesn't need to go.  It drives me nuts that Josh can't go into another room without Gideon going with him and this often involves him calling "Gideon...Gideon....Gideon....Gideon..." a million and a half times.  Since Chief passed away, we can't leave Gideon alone in the house for 5 minutes without him getting into mischief.  I've lost a lot of bread that way.  Lately he's decided that he no longer has to obey when I call him.  So I'll let him out to go to the bathroom and he'll randomly take off running halfway down the street. Tragically I can't whistle and my yelling voice just hasn't been doing the trick, so I end up having to chase him down and drag him all the way back home.  It's miserable.
Gideon spends his time in the garage when we're not home and then comes out to greet us when we open the garage door.  It's hard to see him, especially when he darts around like a lunatic and Mike has taken to saying something like "If we're lucky we'll run him over."  I usually laugh.  Josh scowls.  When Mike lets him out to go to the bathroom he'll often say "Go potty and don't come back."  Once again, I laugh and Josh scowls.  Well, yesterday I guess Josh had had enough of this and said "If you tell Gideon to leave and not come back and he doesn't come back, I'm not going to talk to you for a year."  Mike and I tried not to laugh but it was tough.  Mike then started to give him a hard time about the whole thing but Josh wanted nothing to do with it.  He then said "And if you run him over, it's the same thing!"
Mike said "I hope I don't run him over because then I'd get guts all over my tires and that would be gross."
"That's what you get for running him over!" Josh yelled back.