Alpha Dog

I love her to pieces, but I am convinced my dog is hell-bent on driving me batshit crazy as fast as caninely possible. I can think of no other reason for her existence on this earth.

Rosie is a sweet dog, very mellow. I rarely write about her, because as darling as she is, she’s about as interesting as pocket lint. Unless it’s pocket lint from the boys, then it’s probably mixed with Legos and random trash. Except for her Flatulent Superpower (Able to clear an entire room faster than the speed of light! Now with super-magic-longevity! Her aroma gets into a car’s air system and WHAM! Months later you get to repeat the pleasure!), she’s like a platypus. She doesn’t do much.

Ironically, as I wrote that last paragraph, Rosie started growling in her sleep. Tom and I waited with great anticipation to see if she’d suddenly leap from the couch and chase her dreams into the furniture. I am only a little embarrassed to say that I was disappointed.

In Rosie’s eyes, I am Alpha Dog. I’m the only one she listens to, which is kinda nice. I’m not accustomed to a creature in the house actually listening to me. However, this comes with a down side. I cannot take so much as five steps without her shadowing me. She’d be the worst spy ever. Sometimes I just walk a few steps to see if she’ll move, and sure enough, it’s like she’s on a short chain, following me nearly step for stepstepstepstep. You must picture that with the sound effect of her nails clickityclickityclickity on the hard floor. Her favorite thing to do is to walk directly in front of me…no, wait, in front of me is being generous…directly beneath me and look over her shoulder with every step to make sure I’m coming. This is especially awesome descending our incredibly steep stairs. It’s just a matter of time before I end up in traction. Making eye contact is as good as giving up the next half hour to belly rubs…on her stinky one-third-Basset Hound belly. Sitting down with idle hands will result in a cold nose prodding those idle hands, demanding attention. And belly rubs. She knows when it’s 5:00PM and will not leave you alone until you feed her. I could knit a chihuahua every week with the sheer amount of fur I vacuum.

All this is just daily life with our sweet girl. But lately she’s gotten more…ornery.

While we were out a few weeks ago she dug into A’s zipped backpack, pulled out the snack box that was closed with an elastic band, disassembled it, ate the granola bar in there wrapper and all, and puked it back up. The granola bar was still in rectangular shape. A few weeks before that, she somehow got ahold of a Ziploc baggie of Cub Scout chocolate covered caramel corn that was in one of the boys’ backpacks. We didn’t discover what the hell had made her so sick until we endured nearly a week of EVERYTHING MUST GO! ALL EXITS! NO WAITING! Thankfully/not-so-thankfully the basement carpet is brown. On the bright side, the boys have gotten good at checking for land mines. The dog walker once texted me that it appeared that Rosie had learned to open the Lazy Susan cabinet and started to dig through it looking for food. I swear we feed her. She has recently taken up the hobby of eating her own poop and puking it back up once inside. I’m getting really really good at cleaning up dog vomit. Sadly, not something I can put on a resume. She has commandeered the loveseat and sits on the back of it like a kitten during the day, looking out the window. In the evenings she curls up on top of the pillows and naps…when she’s not chewing on and licking her tail to the point the cushion is soaked. Why yes, a carpet/upholstery cleaning is in our near future!

She’s making me bat.shit.crazy. And I suspect a near-future vet visit is just going to send me down Batshit Crazy Road just a little faster.