What Dog did on his summer vacation

5:30 a.m. Hear alarm clock go off upstairs. Quick go hide under piano. Maybe today she will not think to look for me there.

5:40 a.m. Lady finds me.

She does not even seem to need to look too hard. She comes right there. Maybe I should find a new spot. At least she doesn't yell that I'm on the new rug. Which the man yells about a lot, and says things like, "That's an awful lot of money we just spent on a dog bed!" But the lady just rolls her eyes at him and says she is too tired to be keeping track of what everybody does wrong all day long now that the kids are home, and she'll just vacuum it later.

(She never actually does vacuum it, I have to say. In fact, I don't think she knows where the vacuum is, which is just as well, because it scares the crap out of me. )

Wanna go run? she asks now, all happy-doggy-talky, like that's going to make running around at 5:30 in the morning more appealing.

I shut my eyes tight. Maybe she won't see me.

Hel-looo, Dog? she says. Wanna go? Wanna go?

Do I look like I wanna go, lady?! Leave me the hell alone, already! You don't need me - no one's going to kidnap you at 5:30 in the morning! Everyone's asleep, dammit.

Also? Hello?! I'm wearing a fur coat - it's 70 degrees out there already. And muggy? Like ya' read about. This nonsense is bad enough in the winter, when it's pitch black and icy, but this? No way.

The lady, who apparently is deaf and immune to reason, gets the leash anyway. I take this opportunity to slink into another room.

The lady finds me.

I drag my feet. She still doesn't get the hint, and pulls me out the door. C'mon, c'mon. Let's go! Chop chop, she says.

I hate people who say chop-chop. So I growl at her.

She has the audacity to laugh. At me, who cometh from a fine line of... well, yeah. Nothin' really. I'm a mutt. Still. I do have nice sharp teeth. Don't make me use them!

I won't have time to walk you later - the kids are home. You have to run. It'll tire you out.

Ya' think? Well I'm thinking I was already asleep, so I'm not sure why I'd need tiring out, but you know how these humans are, they like things to go their way.

I sneeze.

The lady remembers I didn't take my allergy pill to make me stop sneezing giant boogers across her house, because she is fed up with that nonsense. So now I have to take pills. Which would be fine, except the lady just opens up my jaws and shoves them down my throat, even though I distinctly heard the vet say something about wrapping them in cheese, or peanut butter, or even whipped cream, whatever that is.

But the lady, she just rolled her eyes behind his back and gave me the Yeah, right, I'm gonna do that look and just shoves them right down. Then she says Just go get some water; you'll be fine.
So we go through that bit of fun, and then we go run. She only lets me stop three times to pee and poop, and there are rules, apparently, too. When the second poop took a little longer than she approved of, she started crinkling her plastic bag and saying "Better go POOP now" over and over. Talk about your performance pressure! Then she complains when we all want to hang out in the bathroom with her!

There were some very scary moments on the run. First, we had to pass an entire row of leaf collection bags. There must have been like 20! Oh, boy, did I tremble! But she made me go right past anyway.

Then, we stopped at a crosswalk, and OH, the horrors! Not just one, but TWO buses were waiting, too! Two, people! Buses are the scariest thing ever. But the lady got cranky about that, called me a chicken, and made me SIT, Dog! And so I sat and shook and shook and shook until they left.

I am really not sure why she thinks I will be a good defense against those 5:30 a.m. kidnappers. I keep telling her and telling her. But she just won't listen.

We run some more. It is starting to get really hot. The lady feels guilty when she sees my tongue dragging along the sidewalk. Which does me no good now, cuz now we're three miles from home, lady, so no matter how sorry you feel, we still have to get back.

We pass a sprinkler, and lady decides to make me drink. I ain't goin' near no sprinkler, hon, so she scoops out a handful and shoves it into my mouth. What is with this lady already, sticking things in there, left and right?!

Anyway... three poops and fives miles later we are home. Lady feels really, really bad about how hot it was and gives me a big bowl of water with lots of ice. But - get this - decides maybe giving me my food will hurt my stomach. So she only gives me a little. I would like to explain the math to her on this one, but am too tired.

THIS is how tired:

Then she says, Dog, I'm going to go weed for half an hour before it gets too hot. Come get me if the kids get up.

Oh, yeah, right, lady. I'll be right there. Puh-lease.

I pass out.

Next thing I know, there are kids all over the place, and the lady is saying Beep! Beep! Dog, and trying to step over me carrying a laundry basket. She steps on my foot because I don't move fast enough. Sorry Dog! she yells. I forgive her and start up my morning routine of following her around. Up the stairs to dump the clean laundry, back downstairs with new dirty loads. Up the stairs to yell at the Boy for not getting dressed. Down the stairs to discover his plate isn't where she thought it should be. Back up with some more laundry; she dumps it on the bed to fold. I like the folding part. That is when she stops for long enough that I can lie down. Or is it lay? I will have to ask her. She was an English major. Surely she will know.

I hear the lady yell, Be Good, Dog! and the door slam, and then all is quiet. Lady comes back sometime later without the boy, but with some bags, which she unpacks into the fridge. Then the lady leaves again. Be Good, Dog! and the door slams. I do not know where she goes, but it seems like it's for a while.

The mailman comes. That is always fun. I hear him from down the street and lay/lie in wait. I bark and bark and bark and bark and rip away at the windowsill some more, defending the house from those evil envelopes. On days that the lady's home, this makes her quite angry. Apoplectic, in fact. But she's not home, so I just go to town, and for good measure smear a dog booger on the front window, too.

Then I nap. When I wake up, the lady is sitting down. Sitting down? But it's still daylight! I've never seen that before! I quick race over with my ball. Maybe she'll play. But the lady has a pointy stick out, not the usual ones, but a little shiny one, and she is muttering something about how she didn't go to college to sew buttons.

I'm thinking maybe she should have, 'cuz she certainly stinks at it, and also that maybe someone should tell her no one went to college to sew buttons but someone's gotta do it, so maybe she should just suck it up and admit that what she hates is that she doesn't have a job and that if she did, maybe sewing buttons would just be regular annoying and not this extremely out of proportion annoying it seems to be to her.

In any case, she doesn't want to throw a ball, apparently.

I feel the need to pee. I tell her.

Really? she asks.

I growl at her. I REALLY need to go, I say.

Oh, fine. Can you wait?

I hop and dance in front of her. She smiles because, damn, I am cute. Even if I am annoying.

But she yells for the girl to take me. I sigh because this will take a long time. That girl takes forever to do anything - the lady always says so and she must be right - and then? The girl only gives me about two seconds to pee, which doesn't get it all out, so then I have to go ask the lady again less than an hour later, and that usually makes her very, very cranky.

I come back in from the pee, and commence following the lady around the house again. There is work to do. Finish the laundry, do some cleaning, yell at people, make lots and lots of phone calls arranging things called carpools and playdates, yell at people some more, and get dinner started.

Once, we trek up to the third floor, where the lady has her knitting stuff, and she just stands there and looks at it and sighs. Probably she is thinking this is one big waste of a room we don't use and I should give it to the dog.

Sometimes we pass the computer, and she looks at it longingly, maybe does a quick email check, but doesn't stop. I miss the days when she'd sit there all day. She even put a dog bed right next to her desk for me, and we would do some writing. But now the kids are home, so now there is too much driving around to think clearly, she says.

The man comes home; I bark at him. I don't really like him. But it's mutual. He has still not gotten over how once twice, three times I ripped his screen door and he had to spend a whole morning fixing it. The lady just rolled her eyes at him and said, Oh, imagine, spending a whole morning doing something you didn't want to do? I can't even begin to dream of such a terrible thing. You poor guy.

Now lady tries to get him to take me out to pee.

He's not MY dog, the man says. The lady rolls her eyes and points at him. She uses a different finger, though, than the one she usually uses to point out my food for me. Fine. But then you're putting the kids to bed, she says.

So she walks me to the corner, then cleans the kitchen and goes into the room where she sits down at night time. I have to time this just right. There she goes... she's about to sit!
I quick put my ball down on the couch, because once that lady sits and pulls out her pointy sticks and those balls of fluff, she ain't getting up. Not for love or money, she always says.

Whatever that means.

I manage to quick put my ball down just in time. The lady sits on it and yells. Then she springs up and throws it.

Bingo! I go run after it and bring it right back.

She ignores me. I drop it into the basket next to her.

This causes lots of yelling. Something about That's silk yarn, you mutt! Get it out! So I run away because she looks quite mad. So then the lady has to pull out my slobber-covered ball herself, and she's not happy, but she flings it far and so I run right after it and bring it back... the lady tries to fend me off with her knees, but I'm too smart. I go right under and plunk it in her lap.

She sighs, and throws it for me a few more times, then I sit down and watch her knit.

It's been a pretty good day.

Or it would be, if someone would remember to feed me.

***********

The folks over at humor-blogs don't make their dogs run. They do make ya' vote for 'em, though. I dunno what's up with that, either.