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Dog sitting, on the couch with me
Curled up next to me on the couch as I type this is the sweetest little thing. I often tell her that she's the most beautiful puppy in the whole room, and it's true. I've looked all over the room and there isn't a more adorable canine anywhere. Probably, her area of aesthetic dominance is larger, but as you can guess from recent blogs, I don't have time to go looking. Anyway, she's spoiled enough with knowing where she stands just in this one room; she'd be insufferable if she knew how cute I really think she is.
At any rate, the fact that she's on the couch next to me at 7:40 on a Sunday evening is attributable to one simple fact: I'm a sucker. Twice over, in fact.
Last weekend, knowing how stressed out my girlfriend is and how little time she has to spend with Beaker, I volunteered to take her for the week. Although last week was a busy one, I knew it wouldn't be as bad as the week before, and a lot of my busyness wouldn't take me as far away for as long a time. Now, some of the problems that my girl has been having with our girl is that she tends to chew on, well, everything (the puppy, not my girlfriend). She gets left in the apartment for long periods and she manages to find everything that could be chewed and does her best to destroy it. Pens and pencils will be sniffed out, furniture will be wrecked--seriously: if the geometry of a 14-pound dog's mouth can find a match in the geometry of said dog's surroundings, the item in question will be munched upon. She also tends to leave other messes. Fully-digested food, if you take my meaning. She's learned that urination is best done outside, but she hasn't balanced the other side of that equation.
It has been a major coup for me, then, that she has neither destroyed nor defiled anything in the past week. It helps that I'm able to come home and take her out a little more frequently, but what really makes the difference is Bella. Bella truly is bella, bellissima even. My upstairs neighbors and I share a fenced-in back yard, and Bella is the primary tenant of that space, a slightly-more-mature-than-Beaker basset hound. She has been my savior. During significant portions of each day, our Beaker is hanging out with their Bella in the back yard. They wrangle over tennis balls, a rope, an old t-shirt, and sticks. They chase one another and growl furiously. When they tussle, Bella has the advantage in size, but Beaker is much quicker. You'd think they were mortal enemies, but they are the best of friends, and in the process Bella has become my best friend.
You see, the reason Beaker's so destructive is because she's bored. She's a little bundle of energy, a frustrated little canid with genes that say she should be squirrel hunting, but owners who say she should be waiting around inside all day for our return. Bella, however, takes care of this problem by giving Beaker a world-class workout each day. By the time evening rolls around, Beaker is ready to sleep for 12 hours or so, and that's just fine with me. You see, she's cutest when she's curled up next to me like this, perhaps asleep, perhaps not, but definitely tired. She's far less cute when she's running around like some rabid thing that is one step away from foaming at the mouth, demanding to be played with and, if I'm not amenable, then stalking the apartment with an appetite for destruction. Right now, though, she's the cutest thing in the world.
Which is why I was a sucker and agreed to keep her for another week. If it goes as smoothly as the first, though, that will be no bad thing. I can't leave her in the back yard all day, unfortunately. Although she's a small dog, she has long legs and great leaping and climbing ability. We already know that she can get out of the fenced-in yard, because she has. We went out to dinner one evening, leaving her back there, and when we came home she was waiting for us on the porch, ready to go in. I suspect if she'd tried to track us, she'd have been a goner, because her conception of automobile traffic is, I think, decidedly deficient. If Bella's outside, however, Beaker's track record is that she'll stay behind the fence with her buddy. Even alone, she'll usually stay back there, but I hate to chance that while I'm away all day. This whole plan is also only workable so long as the weather is nice, but weather.com seems confident I'll make it through the week. We shall see. All in all, I suppose it's good practice for next year, when I'll have a hard time shirking dog duties with the three of us living together. It will also be hard without my #1 accomplice, the sweet Bella.
Well, one week at a time, right?