I need to talk about the puppies.
Oh sure. They look innocent enough. That’s part of their master plan.
I love them. I love their puppy breath and Piper’s pretty eyes and the way Mabel puts her front paws in the water dish while she drinks. I love the way their ears constantly flop backwards like little superhero capes and how they run across the yard to meet us at the gate when we pull up in the driveway. They are precious.
And those things are good for me to remember.
Because there are moments that I think we were out of our mind to bring home two creatures with an energy level that would remind me of my Kitchenaid mixer turned on high if my mixer also occasionally liked to pee on the rug and chew up flip-flops.
We had finally reached a point in life where we had a child who can make her own sandwiches and appreciates the fine art of sleeping late and now we have added two poop machines who like to wake up barking at the crack of dawn. What are they barking at, you ask? Each other, Scout, a dog walking by, a leaf falling from a tree, an ant crawling on the sidewalk, and the air.
And so my summer has been reduced to this. I wake up to the dogs barking as soon as P leaves for work. They’re barking because he has left, they’re barking because it’s morning, they’re barking because they are alive. I lie in bed for a few minutes to see if the barking will stop. When it inevitably doesn’t, I stumble outside and greet the puppies, who are jumping up and down like they’re on a bungee cord hovering over a canyon, with a warm, loving question along the lines of “Why are y’all so dumb?”
But then they have me where they want me and I’m helpless to resist their little puppy charms and so I let them inside to sit with me while I drink my coffee at a much earlier hour than I really prefer in the summertime. Or ever. They’ll curl up by me and take a little morning nap while I do my Bible study and check Twitter or whatever and I get lulled into thinking they’re precious. It reminds me of that episode of Friends where Phoebe’s brother looks at his sleeping triplets and says, “I really treasure these moments. Because pretty soon they’re going to wake up again.”
This is usually about the time one of them will jump down and attack the fireplace tools because the fireplace tools exist and are very menacing sitting there lifelessly on the hearth. And then they’ll begin to race around the house, sliding and skidding on the wood floors like kids at a roller rink for the first time, until I open the back door, call their names and they go flying outside to annoy Scout. It makes me feel like we might as well have brought home two tasmanian devils.
And then they engage in one of their favorite activities that I like to call “Your Bone Looks Better Than Mine”. They each have their own bone. They are exactly the same. And they are happy with their respective bones for 1.3 seconds before they feel their bone must be inadequate compared to their sister’s bone. If you ever doubt that all living creatures have something innate that makes us feel like someone else might have something better than us, the puppies are living proof it’s true. They growl and chase to get the other’s bone and then are completely dissatisfied with it and want their original bone back two seconds later.
It’s as fun for me as you’re imagining. And I hear myself saying things like “Don’t be mean to your sister!” and “Why would you do that to your sister?” and “Sisters don’t fight! Sisters love!”.
What I’m saying is I don’t even know who I am anymore.
Then, to add insult to injury, Scout peed on the rug yesterday. Scout. Our sixteen year old dog who has been house trained for fifteen and a half years. He just stood there and let it go. Just like Elsa in Frozen except he didn’t freeze anything rather than just urinated. On my rug.
So I used my dog psychology skills and asked him “WHY DID YOU DO THAT? WHY? WHAT IS HAPPENING?” as I escorted him out of the house. Because here’s the thing. It’s one thing when a baby pees on your rug, but it’s an entirely different kettle of fish when grandpa does it. We can just start with sheer volume and go on from there.
Truth be told, I’ve been telling P for months that I think Scout has dementia and I feel this incident confirmed it. He is losing his mind.
Which, on the bright side, means that I’m not alone.