The children have been out of school for a day and a half, and already the dog has gone completely insane.
To be fair, there’s a crew here working on the new fence, and when you are a 12-pound vicious guard dog that requires a lot of running back and forth from one end of the house to the other, barking and whining, just in case the pounding and trucks in the yard hadn’t yet alerted you to the fact that INTRUDERS are AFOOT. The fact that said intruders are hard at work erecting a dog run for your spoiled furry ass is apparently not a deterrent to this behavior, by the way.
But even yesterday, before the banging and clanging began, the dog was already on the edge of clinical insanity. I suspect that she—like me—goes off the rails pretty quickly when her sleep is disturbed. And when the kids are at school, she sleeps almost the whole time. Now that they’re home? No such luck.
[I typoed that at first as “no suck luck,” which is all kinds of wrong because truly, it IS suck luck.]
Instead of spending the day burrowed under the couch in my office, snoring and dreaming of chasing squirrels, Licorice is now subjected to a endless stream of daily indignities. Like, Monkey is perfectly happy to sit down on the couch, bend forward until his face is upside-down in front of her, and then grab her and pull her out from her cave. Chickadee, on the other hand, will simply fling herself to the floor and scooch, worm-style, until she’s worked her way under the couch WITH the dog, who eventually flees in terror.
Once awakened, the dog then wants the children to adore her, as is her right as Princess Fluffybottom Spoiledkibble. But GUESS WHAT? Once the child in question has poked her, woken her up, displaced her from her cave, and teased her for a bit, that same child is generally all “Licorice, stop jumping on me” and “This is MY breakfast, Licorice” and “It’s not my turn to take the dog out!” And then the dog is all LOVE ME FEED ME TAKE ME OUT TO PEE and the children mysteriously vanish in a cloud of whining and GUESS WHO is left to tend to the dog?
My efforts to stuff her back under the couch don’t always succeed, I can tell you that much.
And yesterday Chickadee thought it would be nice to take the dog down to the pond with her, which was SUPER EXCITING for Licorice until she… well, reports are a bit fuzzy, but apparently a “little drink” turned into a “little swim.” And that’s all good and well, but it turns out that if you come back to the house covered in swampy pond mud, you’re going straight into the kitchen sink for a bath. OH THE HUMANITY.
So now the dog is racing through the house, protesting the racket outside, trying to steer clear of sticky fingers inside, and hoping against home that someone, somewhere, will eventually give her something to eat. Because if there’s one thing she knows even more surely than that the INVADERS outside must be SCARED OFF, it’s that she hasn’t eaten in far too long.
“Are you going to eat those apples? All of them? I’m SO SO HUNGRY!”
Last night while Otto and I were sitting on the couch watching television, Licorice hurled herself onto the adjacent loveseat, vanquished the pillows on top, and then wedged herself into the crack between the two seat cushions. As we laughed at her, she lay as flat as possible, given away only by her wagging tail. A hard day of being tormented done broke her little doggy brain, clearly.
(I keep telling her she needs to tone it down just a little if I’m ever to talk Otto into a second dog, but so far, no dice. Maybe after the fence guys leave.)
Good thing for Licorice those are apple slices and not grapefruit. I hear all is fair in love and grapefruit at your house and I’m not sure she could stand the torment. ;-)
Um, I have a dog you can have. She’s older and quiet and smallish and we can’t take her overseas. She’s also 98% deaf, so she’d sleep right through the craziness at your house. Just so happens my husband will be driving through Georgia at the beginning of July, and I’m sure he’d be happy to drop her off… :)
That’s exactly what happens to my son. Well, the needing to sleep all day. And the eating. And a bit of the utter insanity.
I’d better not find him under the couch when I get home…
That’s why my cats hide during the day once the kids are out of school and fortunately they are pretty good at it. lol
My dog is constantly hiding from my one year old that tries to sit on him, pull all the hair around his mouth and bite his tail…she’s just trying to love the dog. Kids are rough for dogs, but oh the joy the dog brings the kids.
I too am desperately trying to woo my husband into getting another dog. So not working.
What Licorice needs is a series of Hop-kido lessons wherein he can use the childrens’ chaos against them. Licorice can learn to BE the chaos, sending the children scampering under the couch for cover. Thwak-KAH!
Ah, summertime! Good for kids, bad for parents and dogs? It is exhausting having to BE AWAKE ALL day long! Geez….
We’ve been having workers ON our apartment building off and on for the past month. There have been many, many choruses of “Shhhh it’s ok,” and “Thank you. That’s enough,” during that time to our little pug guard dog. The basset hound, however, has taken it all in stride.
Hopefully your three will come to some sort of truce! Kudos to Licorice for hiding *in* the couch. That’s clever :D
Your 12-pound vicious guard dog sounds suspiciously like my 9-pound vicious guard dog, I love it! He’s always so indignant when something messes with his schedule and gets a little out of sorts if we don’t go up to bed when he wants to. I hope the excitement wears down!
Two cats, one three day airshow every summer, right outside the building. This results in two cats hiding in either the linen closet or under my parents bed. And NOTHING will dislodge them.
Gee. I only have guard bunnies. I miss so much.
Also? If I’m feeling evil, all I have to do is say my step-nieces name within earshot of the cats and they start wildly looking around, low to the ground in search of a hiding place. Step-niece is three years old.