Tag: Dog

Pup Up with the Joneses

Most mornings when I drag myself out of bed for my 5AM display of writing discipline, I head to our study and shut the door.

Now that winter has finally arrived, however, something in me craves the company of the wood stove (it’s a want, not a need – our earth-sheltered house keeps the temps pretty steady), and I’ve been making my way out to my kitchen-study.  On these mornings, a soft jingle greets me as Katy, the wonder dog surreptitiously hops off the big green recliner in the family room, and I start the morning with a chuckle, amazed she still engages in the charade, if only once a day.

When I was a kid, my parents had a big black Lab named Rurik (my mom was studying Russian history then).  Their house was decidedly neater than ours – the neatness gene went to my sister – and there was never a question of whether dogs should be allowed on furniture.  Rurik was not.  Still, while he never openly challenged this rule or appeared to disobey at night, my mom would sometimes find a mass black fur on the burnt-umber sofa cushions after a day out.

We had this same pattern of rules and quiet, civil disobedience with our first dog after we moved to Vermont.  We acquired Josie, a Spoffordshire Terrier mix, from the local shelter while we were still under the influence of the German suburban sensibilities we had absorbed a couple years earlier while living just north of Frankfurt.  While our international experience hadn’t pumped up my cleaning mojo much, we did come back with certain ideas about how dogs should behave, and reserving furniture for humans was one of them.  Like Rurik, Josie had her ideas too, and she obeyed when we were there and left the telltale black-and-white fur on the sofa while we weren’t.

But the longer we lived in Vermont, the more suburban sensibilities we shed.  After the second year, we both abandoned any interest in restoring the front door of our then 200 year-old farmhouse and creating a formal entrance – the default entrance in Vermont is through the mudroom.  We both enthusiastically embraced the Vermont version of business casual (wearing your good jeans or newer Carhardts to work), and as we visited homes and got to know more of our neighbors, I unconsciously noticed that many people let dogs on furniture.

When we got Katy, we still stuck to our old ways – more out of habit than conviction now, but after a  year I found the evidence that she had taken up the dogs-on-furniture banner.  We caught her once or twice and shooed her off, but I clearly did not express my position well enough.  I wasn’t sure what my position was now.

She must have sensed a possible change in doggie fortunes in our house because soon after I brought home the green recliner from a tag sale, she staked it out as her spot.  The Big Guy shooed her off multiple times.  I did it a few times.  But each time she would return, soon not even waiting for us to leave before she slid one paw and then another onto the seat and then her body the rest of the way onto the chair.

I’ve chosen my big battles at this point.  The only ones I wage seriously now are to be sure Thing1 finishes seventh-grade English with as few psychological scars as necessarily and that Thing2 takes off the rainbow wig before school.  It might be because the Wonder Dog looks relatively cute sitting on that chair, but now, when I go over to give her a little petting, I realize that I’m getting almost too good at letting go of little battles.  Some people might call that laziness, and maybe I am lazy.  We’re not just not keeping’ up with the Joneses, we’ve given up on the whole race.  And while that may be a sign of our sloth, it does give us a chance to look around and enjoy the journey.

If I Didn’t Laugh

I got up at 5:00 AM this morning, but my mind was not on my keyboard.

Instead, I was thinking of my lovable mutt, Katie, who had been locked in the mudroom overnight.  She had returned home just as the sun and the mercury were falling, reeking from a game of ‘I dare you to rub in that’.  It was too late to give her a bath, but at 5:00AM this morning, I knew something would have to be done and the knowledge that I would be the one to do it whatever it was.

So instead of doing something useful or soothing (like writing), I wasted time in the reading room playing iPod Scrabble.  The pup was quiet, the kids were quiet, and there I stayed almost until it was time to launch the morning school routine.  Sadly, avoidance therapy didn’t make the dog smell any better.

The boys and I managed to get out of the mudroom without inhaling too much of the stink. I actually found some comfort in the routine of hustling them into the car, scraping the windows, and attempting to break the sound barrier to get them to school on time.  The ride home was much slower, and the closer I got, the slower the car seemed to go.

I knew Katie would need a bath, and I knew it would be a soaking wet dirty job that had to happen inside.  I knew the country store stocked all sorts of useful pet supplies (the owners are mushers and religious about quality dog products), so I stopped in on the way home.  I tried to drag out the shopping trip, but there was an online meeting at 9:00AM, and I knew the bath had to happen soon.

I got home feeling vaguely depressed and with the nagging feeling that I wanted a vacation.  As I wandered through the house, getting the bathroom ready for a canine client and finding an extra leash and an old towel, however, my grooming plan began to form, and my spirits lifted a bit.  I knew I would be soaked when the bath was over, and I doffed my clothes on the bed.  Wandering from room to room, I thought once again how grateful I am that the only things outside our sliding windows are trees, and I wondered if my sense of propriety was about to reach a new low.  It was.

I had everything ready and was about to open the mudroom door and leash the dog when I remembered we had garbage bags in the cabinet.  Figuring one of them would make a great poncho, I reached in and pulled out a 30 gallon bag.  It looked big enough to shield my girth from water, but there was still a problem.   It was clear.

By the time I had ripped a neck and arm holes in the ‘poncho’, I was chuckling.  Katie didn’t mind my fashion faux pas nearly as much as she minded being popped into the tub and scrubbed down.  I was now literally elbow deep in the job I had dreaded all morning, and for some reason, I was smiling as I washed and soothed.

I know some folks might say it was just getting the thing over with that made me smile.  There’s probably some truth to that, but, as I tore off my rated-R dog-washing poncho, a little part of me decided that truth doesn’t have to be stranger than fiction to be funny enough to get you through the day.  But sometimes it helps.

Company

Colder weather only drives them indoors a little earlier in the day.  There’s nothing, however, like the first snow to bring our furrier family members completely back into the fold.

It was the damp and not the cold that ushered all of them in at once this morning.  The dog’s demeanor was that of one who is happy to be at theme after a morning constitutional.  The cats, on the other hand, are company; every action calculated to communicate their hegemony over the rest of the household.  And, for some reason I still can’t discern, this bestial ballet always inspires questions about the existences we might have known before.

Watching the cats saunter lazily to the kitchen, staring down the dog at her own food dish, I often think how glad I am that I’m bigger than they.  I know there are many homeless cats with piteously short and hungry lives.  But as I kneel down to clean up the magazines unceremoniously shoved off the console by one of our now-lounging felines, I wonder what act of heroism a human would have had to perform to achieve the rank of “house cat” in their next existence.