July 5, 2013
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The Day After
It is a busy, busy day today. The next door neighbor is mowing his lawn. He doesn’t do it right. We have had to rush outside and correct him at least five times now.
The people behind the fence: they’ve been talking again. We’ve had to speak sharply to them.
And the front yard is FULL of fools on wheels, pedaling past.
Last night a whole bunch of big trucks with flashing lights and rude noises flew past our house, and we put on our leashes and we all went outside and sat on the bench on the front porch, all of us, even Riley. It seemed like it might be more exciting than it was.
And there were lots of loud noises last night. We don’t mind loud noises–like we’re not afraid of them or anything–but they make us nervous and super diligent about patrolling the property. We had to go check on The Ladies at least nine times. At one point Cheryl put us on a leash and made us lay under the kitchen table while she ate something that smelled particularly good. (She gave me a few pieces–it was really good. For some reason it made me think about The Ladies, but I know that’s bad.)
Cheryl is playing a new games with us. It’s called…something, I don’t know… This is how you play. We run outside and alert her to something. She calls, “Annie!” (We ignore her.) She calls, “Annie, come!” (Depending on what we’re doing, sometimes we come, sometimes we linger…) If we’re particularly busy barking, she calls, “Annie, Leave IT!” and then she calls, “Annie, come!” and we come and she gives up a treat. Every time. It’s kind of amazing. Sometimes we come whether she’s called us or not. She says strange things like, “I didn’t call you, Annie–you get the treat when you come when I call.”
She also says stuff like, “We need to speed up the lag between my call and your come” and then she pats me on the chest and sings about tiger eyes. She does that, Riley says. I don’t know what that’s about. but Holly really taught her the good stuff about treats.
But right now we’re going to work with Nancy and this is very good because it’s a ‘go’ thing. We are all about going. The other day Cheryl was going to go somewhere and we trotted right out to the garage door with her, and we sat when she told us to sit because–we didn’t want to–but she told us to and we did, and we used our very best pleading brown eyes and every muscle in our body was keyed up to GO with Cheryl…
And she left us.
We did everything we were supposed to do, and she left us.
Our heart was broken.
And then we went outside and corrected the neighbors, which Cheryl keeps saying is really not our job, but that just goes to show you what she knows.
