No, I promise, that’s not a transition into some political pundit’s perspective on the ‘historic’ mid-term elections.
By IT, I mean our personal pet-parenting style.
There, now you know what IT is. Share with your friends.
There’s a drawback to Sophie’s better health, however. Feeling better allows Sophie to return to some of her more disturbing neurotic behaviors.
First, she’s paying attention to her surroundings more. This means that we bark more. We bark when people drive down the street. We go nuclear when someone walks a dog down the street.
Sidebar to the people I have never met before who have, unfortunately, walked their dog down our street, and been exposed to our dogs vicious-sounding protests, and then my peals of laughter—I am sorry. I know it is inappropriate to laugh at you. I also think it is like laughing at a child’s amusing yet bad behavior choices. I am condoning her barking at you by laughing in response, and I think on some level, she knows.
But the way you jump, and swing around, with a look of shock on your face… Well, I promise that I am not really a sadist. It’s just funny that everyone has the same damn reaction to my dog.
The thing that really bugged me, however, is when she decided to expend a tremendous amount of energy barking at the hot air balloon outside our patio door in the early morning hours. Not only did she wake me up—I am pretty sure that her reaction to a freaking hot air balloon woke up the entire neighborhood.
Perhaps she’s just indignant at the fact that people get up and do things in the early morning hours of a weekend day. Gosh people! Way to ruin it for the rest of us by making us feel guilty about our weekend- inspired sloth!
Then there’s the paper towel eating. I cannot even begin to explain how tired I am with being on Sophie poop-watch.
Apparently, she’s not. I know that it’s pretty common for dogs to inspect their waste. They smell it to gauge their health, and I’m down with that (although I don’t know how helpful it really is, since she can’t talk to me to tell me if something is up), but Sophie takes it a bit far. I am happy she’s not a poop-eater (she’s too much of a princess for that), but she does more than inspect her pee to see if we’ve been sneaking antibiotics in her cheeseballs again.
Whenever she poops, she’s so damned pleased with herself that she trots two full circles around the backyard fence, celebrating the fact that she pooped! Yes, I do mean trot. Like a freaking trained pony.
This becomes really annoying when you are standing outside, waiting for her to be ready to come in and it is 28 degrees and you didn’t wear shoes outside on the cold patio.
Finally, there’s the fact that she’s decided that K is her enemy—especially when it comes to sitting down at the kitchen table. The underneath of the kitchen table is her personal Super-Sophie bat cave. She’s decided that K is the Joker to her Batman, and that if he were to sit down at the kitchen table—for, oh, I don’t know, dinner—then that is a direct attack on her secret lair.
Except that she doesn’t growl at him or try to harm him. She complains-- like she is talking. She sounds like Scooby Doo. “Rawr-Rawr, Rawr-RRRAAAAAWWWWWWRRRRRR.”
Which was funny, at first, but is not so much fun since it has become the daily soundtrack to eating supper.
“So, Sarah,” you may be asking me behind your computer screen, “Why don’t you train her to behave differently?” Ha!
Don’t you think we’ve tried? Sophie-training, on the whole, does not give you the desired behavior. It gets you a look of contempt and a sigh. From a dog.
I dare the Dog Whisperer to come and try his hand on Sophers. I think it would be his first fail. I think he would run away, crying.
She really does have a scathing look of contempt.
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