But this time the finger of blame did not appear to be pointing at the dogs. This time, the giveaway was a small pile of crescent shaped mouse droppings (yes, they actually are crescent shaped if you look closely enough, you know, if you don’t have cable or anything) at the bottom of the grooming tote and a few that led to a get-away trail that I followed along the top of the tack trunk, through an opening in its lid (propped open like an over-stuffed suitcase) and finally, after a careful inspection, burrowed beneath a pile of horse blankets, voila, found 15 empty candy wrappers, an enormous mound of droppings and no evidence of peppermints whatsoever.

Muscling the massive trunk out the tack room door into the grass in front of the barn, I sighed at this added task to my afternoon of emptying it and cleaning out all traces of mouse poo before getting on with my chores. Shaking out saddle pads and blankets, the cellophane wrappers fluttered to the ground around my feet. It was then the dogs appeared, as if by magic, to inspect the pile of equipment on the ground.

“Now you arrive!” I scolded, refolding the gear, “It might have been nice had you been on mouse patrol before this.”

Bonnie looked rather apologetic and Rosie, as is her way, deliberately mislead me by giving the appearance of sniffing around the trunk for prey before lunging forward and snatching up three candy wrappers and dashing away with them into the woods.

Visions of vet bills from her ingesting or choking on them made me drop everything and run, cursing, after her, but to no avail.

Bonnie, bless her, remained obediently and decided to have a good sniff around the tack room. Because of their size, rats tend to be easier for her to catch, but this time it shouldn’t be too difficult for her to find these mice, who must now certainly be considered obese.

With a staggering BMI and a sugar high.