Our dogs (including grand-dogs) range in age from 11 months to 9 years. After all this time, I’ve finally come to realize something: They like making me crazier than I was the day before. How do they do this? They have a meeting; I know it. I think it must be similar to some businesses that have a ten-minute power meeting each morning to get employees motivated and on track with the day’s tasks. That’s what the dogs do. There’s no other explanation for them acting the same way on the same day. No, I’ve never actually seen them have this meeting. I’ve not found them sitting in a circle in the yard drinking coffee, eating biscuits, and looking like they’re plotting but I swear they do. Maybe they’re stealth about it but it happens. After I explain what happens, you’ll be sure it happens too. You might even start wondering if your dogs do it too!
Marc recently planted winter grass. That means the sprinklers are on more often and rather than in the middle of the night like in summertime, they’re on during the day now. When they come on, the dogs go outside and play in them. They’ve never done that before. Now it’s like a bell rings for recess and they head out. The playing in the water isn’t a big deal. I love that they play and run outside; it’s good for them. I also don’t mind when they come in wet. Our whole house is tile so that we don’t have to stress about wet dogs. We have a fake leather sofa for the same reason. What I do mind is when Zoey comes in, stands behind my chair and shakes. After I’ve wiped that water off, Jax comes in and does the same thing. So, I then wipe that water off. Shortly thereafter, it’s Ryder’s turn to come shake on me, rub up against my arm and leg, or all of the above. Not only have they just shook all that water on me, it’s also gone all over my computer monitors! Oh and my desk and keyboard and anything else in my general area. Now keep this in mind, our house is 1600 square feet, there is other area for them to shake. They also walk twenty-ish feet from the dog door to my desk. Do they shake on the way? Nope. Do they shake before coming in? Nope. They wait, all three of them, to shake until they are within inches of me. Coincidence? I think not. Meeting of the K-9s? Definitely.
This same type of scene happens with burps and farts. We can have a day, even two in a row, where none of them crop dust me with their fart while they’re walking by. No watery eyes from the stench and no gagging. Those are glorious days. We can also have days without loud burps that cause me to question if they came from dog or human. Unfortunately, on the “fart and burp” days, they gang up on me. Blaze will suddenly get the walking farts. Yea, a dog with the walking farts. I know. Then Jax will just happen to lay at my feet, which he rarely does, and let out a cloud of what I can only describe as the horrible bad egg smell of natural gas. Of course Crispie needs to play her part and stretch like she does a million times per day but on the “fart” day, she just happens to have a fart squeak (literally) out in my direction. Ryder and Zoey have a special talent for burps. Ryder loves to get in my face just to make sure I know he’s there. Normally I think it’s funny. However, when he does that on fart and burp day, he always feels the need to carry through with his part, meaning, he burps in my face. I’m talking nose-to-nose and then a pffft of the most disgusting smelling acidy burp. More times than not I’m afraid some got on me. Zoey tends to be less obvious. She might come up to me and nudge my arm or walk up to me while I’m sitting on the sofa. In both of those situations, she just opens her mouth and burps. It’s like a scene where a little brother walks up to his sister and randomly burps (or farts) in her face. Yup, that’s Zoey and me. And Zoey doesn’t have the acid type burps like Ryder. She saves them up for this very special day. When she does let them out, there’s that gurgling in her throat as the burp bursts out and you can see that she just threw up in her mouth a little bit. Nasty right? Absolutely. Seriously, they wait and each takes an opportunity to participate on fart and burp day. Coincidence? I think not. Meeting of the K-9s? Definitely.
Our bed, simply put, gets wrecked by them! This is an ongoing thing so I know this isn’t about a “day;” this is about every day and it drives me crazy. We can make sure the bed is made perfectly. Everything tucked in appropriately. No open edges. It doesn’t work. For a long time it was a sort of game. A battle of wills really. Our mission: To keep them above the comforter. Their mission: To get under the comforter. The winner would get bragging rights. Well, they’ve won over and over and over. If they keep winning, we may just give them the bed. We’ve made it impossible for them to get under the covers; but they do. I don’t know how, but they make it possible. Of course they don’t just get under the comforter. No. They get under the sheets. They get on the pillows. That means the dirt from their paws and their fur is everywhere. It’s this super soft silt and you can’t get away from it. It gets under the sheets, in the pillow cases. They do this on purpose I swear. When you lay in the bed it feels like you’re lying on the beach and not in a good way. The oddest thing is, you swipe and swipe the sheet so it’s clean and you don’t feel that silt. Then get in bed and there’s suddenly more. Where the hell did it come from? So you do it again and the same thing happens. If that’s not bad enough, Crispie does something that absolutely pushes me over the edge. She licks her feet. That in itself is fine. But, she licks her feet while lying on the pillows. She doesn’t do it when she’s lying on the dog bed. She doesn’t do it when she’s on the couch. Nope. She only does it when she’s on the bed pillows and then she leaves a huge wet spit spot. Eww, eww, and eww right? Right! They could do this stuff on the other beds in the house. They could do the same things on the sofa and on their own beds but they choose to do it on our bed. I know what you’re thinking, why don’t we keep them off the bed right? We do! I swear to you we’ve cleaned the sheets and not let them get on the bed before us and it doesn’t work. I was worried it was actually coming from Marc and me! I don’t get it, I really don’t. I don’t know how they do it. Each one of them is a pro at it. Coincidence? I think not. Meeting of the K-9s? Definitely.
Meetings of the K-9s. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me. Marc and I have talks about them. You know, what they do, what we should be teaching them. I now have to wonder though, if their behaviors are payback for the random things we do to them that we find funny. We tickle their pads when they’re sleeping. Pull on their tails to get them to chase them. Pull their jowls up because they’re so long. Cover their eyes with their ears. Keep scratching their tickle spot to make them do that leg scratching thing. Lift their lips to check their teeth. Cut their toe nails even though they hate it. Clean their ears even though they’d rather we didn’t. Give them baths they’d rather not have. Take their temperature when…ok yea, I understand why they have meetings and honestly, now I don’t blame them a bit.
Talk soon,
pv