Sometimes we’re frantically looking for her, worried that she has gotten out of the yard.
She just watches us, amused, from her invisible perch.
That thumping, happy tail is what gives her location away.
The TV remote is also black.
It also gets lost in plain sight.
We have to frisk the couch, like they do to bad guys on cop shows, to find the remote.
So you can imagine that I was upset when I came home the other day to find Bob on one end of the house and the dog in the back yard, with the doggy door opened.
I had already declared the doggy door off limits since Blue brought in that dead rabbit.
Can you imagine sitting down and reaching around to move that lumpy thing from underneath yourself, thinking it’s a dog toy or the TV remote, only to find yourself elbow deep in a mangy dead rabbit?
Gaaaahhhhh!
Bob had the nerve to laugh.
And protest, because he thinks the doggy door is so convenient.
Too bad.
One dead rabbit in the house is more dead critters than I can tolerate.
So you can image that I was REALLY upset to come in to the house the next day to find Bob napping on the couch, and the doggy door open.
“But she had to go out,” he protested.
We had three dogs before Blue who did not have a doggy door.
We can manage without it.
I closed up the doggy door and sealed it with a much-more-than-necessary amount of blue painter tape.
Yes, I was sending a message.
Bob thought the entire episode was hilarious.
Until he went outside to do some yard work.
Blue immediately killed a rabbit.
And while Bob was cleaning that mess up, she killed another one.
Including my Blue, there were three dogs in the house.
For days and days and days.
Oh. My. God.
That’s too many dogs.
At any given moment of any given day, one wanted in, one wanted out, one was barking, one was digging, one was chewing, one was jumping, and two were picking on the other one.
I got nothing done all week.
It felt like the old days with all the neighborhood kids running in and out of the house.
I definitely had a lot more tolerance for chaos back in the day.
Now that the boys are grown, I’ve become accustomed to a quiet and orderly routine.
Although Blue enjoyed the company, as soon as her playmates went home, she melted into the kitchen floor and slept soundly for several hours.
