Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Dog Disaster Day
(Well, not REAL disasters, but Dog Accident Day is not as alliterative.)
It is cold here. Very cold. Minus seven cold, with a wind chill rating of -20. So the dogs have not been outdoors in their run much. Even Sheila the Certifiable, who HATES to come inside, slunk in with the rest about 4 o'clock. She may be crazy but she's not STUPID.
The one wearing the Stupid Sign would be me. Around 7, poor Cowboy came over to sit near me, and gradually started making a VERY faint whining noise. I thought it was because I had the little foot warming space heater going and it was making him uncomfortable. How sweet and loyal, I thought, for him to come keep me company anyway....
Getting no useful response from me, he went over to Caro's side of the computer desks. That was the point where even a very brave and determined dog could hold out no longer. Um, yeah. So that was KIND of a disaster, or at least a major accident. And he was so EMBARRASSED, because you know Good Dogs just DON'T....
Ok, so with Mike's help Caro turned all the dogs out while I did the emergency clean-up routine. After I figured they'd had time to empty out, but before they could turn to little dog-cicles, I let them all back in again.
We have six dogs. The two oldest, Duke and Cowboy, are ultra-reliable about all house rules except the one against illicit trash-digging. So the other four have crates (and we put the trash can in the sink at night.) Climber, the baby of the pack, is the spriest, so her little crate is stacked on top of Buddy's big one. When she comes in, she always leaps up and in for a quick check, because Mike often leaves his sandwich crusts for her. (Mike Never Eats Crusts. He is, in fact, the Anti-Crust.)
Tonight, for some reason, after helping let the dogs out, Mike neatly CLOSED THE CRATE DOORS. So when Climber bounded up, with her usual long elegant leap from about 4 feet away, she saw too late that the No Admittance sign was well and truly out. Her only choices were to somehow levitate for a split second and do a magical 180 in mid-air, or smack into the crate door and rebound, like a furry soccer ball deflected by a galvanized goalie grid.
Of course, being half Border Collie and half Blue Heeler, she did the mid-air evasion thing as though she'd been practicing the move since she got her milk teeth. I wish you could have seen it!
It is cold here. Very cold. Minus seven cold, with a wind chill rating of -20. So the dogs have not been outdoors in their run much. Even Sheila the Certifiable, who HATES to come inside, slunk in with the rest about 4 o'clock. She may be crazy but she's not STUPID.
The one wearing the Stupid Sign would be me. Around 7, poor Cowboy came over to sit near me, and gradually started making a VERY faint whining noise. I thought it was because I had the little foot warming space heater going and it was making him uncomfortable. How sweet and loyal, I thought, for him to come keep me company anyway....
Getting no useful response from me, he went over to Caro's side of the computer desks. That was the point where even a very brave and determined dog could hold out no longer. Um, yeah. So that was KIND of a disaster, or at least a major accident. And he was so EMBARRASSED, because you know Good Dogs just DON'T....
Ok, so with Mike's help Caro turned all the dogs out while I did the emergency clean-up routine. After I figured they'd had time to empty out, but before they could turn to little dog-cicles, I let them all back in again.
We have six dogs. The two oldest, Duke and Cowboy, are ultra-reliable about all house rules except the one against illicit trash-digging. So the other four have crates (and we put the trash can in the sink at night.) Climber, the baby of the pack, is the spriest, so her little crate is stacked on top of Buddy's big one. When she comes in, she always leaps up and in for a quick check, because Mike often leaves his sandwich crusts for her. (Mike Never Eats Crusts. He is, in fact, the Anti-Crust.)
Tonight, for some reason, after helping let the dogs out, Mike neatly CLOSED THE CRATE DOORS. So when Climber bounded up, with her usual long elegant leap from about 4 feet away, she saw too late that the No Admittance sign was well and truly out. Her only choices were to somehow levitate for a split second and do a magical 180 in mid-air, or smack into the crate door and rebound, like a furry soccer ball deflected by a galvanized goalie grid.
Of course, being half Border Collie and half Blue Heeler, she did the mid-air evasion thing as though she'd been practicing the move since she got her milk teeth. I wish you could have seen it!
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