Puppy Tales

Happy has been the perfect furry addition to our family.  He is very smart and wants to please, so he's very well-behaved, for the most part.  He has a couple of bad habits, from his previous owners.  Evidently, they 1) fed him table scraps; and 2) let him sleep in the kids' beds, so he barks in his kennel at night.  Monday, I had to put him out in the garage when the kids ate their snack and dinner, because he wouldn't stop begging and trying to climb up onto the table.  Last night, he did great at dinnertime - I actually forgot he was in the house, until I looked around to figure out where he'd gone, and saw him quietly lying under the table.  (He probably knew the odds were in his favor that, if he stayed there long enough, one of the kids would drop something.  He's a smart dog.)

 

Now, instead of having a 2-kid train follow me from room to room, I have a 2-kid+1-dog train following me everywhere.  I wouldn't have believed that another body could possibly fit into our too-small bathroom, but a small, furry black body does manage to squeeze in. 

 

Monday night, we had our first mini-crisis.  The chain-link fence in the front yard had a gap between the ground and the bottom of the fence, which I was repairing with chicken wire.  Happy and the kids were playing up by the garage, so I thought he was distracted.  I turned my back to grab the wire snips, and when I turned back around, there was Happy on the WRONG side of the fence, and quick as a flash he took off down the road after a bicyclist.  Of course, Ron was at work so I was home alone.  I told the kids to stay put, and went in chase of the dog.  Wrong move, because of course he thought it was a game and wouldn't come back for anything.

 

Then I turned to see that Sam was crawling under the fence.  "STAY THERE," I said in my firmest voice, and Sam listened but I could tell he really wanted to come and help me, so I didn't trust him to stay.  I went through the options in my head, and it seemed that all I could do was run in the house to get my keys and throw the kids in the van, and good luck to me finding the dog after all that time had passed.  Thankfully, just then a very nice couple stopped and asked if I needed some help.  The woman made sure my kids didn't go on the road while I finally managed to grab the dog, about a quarter mile down the road.  Good thing I had my tennis shoes on, because I got quite a bit of running in that night. 

 

While my kids have never run out onto the road and refused to come back, at least once a week they manage to frighten and/or annoy me with their antics, so Happy the dog fits right in with the craziness that is our family.  I think we'll keep him.