Gone to the Dogs: Reflections on Passive Aggression and Puppy Piddle

I am a traditional girl who traditionally takes part in several traditional summer traditions. One of these traditional summer traditions has been to puppy sit for my pal Elizabeth.

My first excursion into the furry, slobbery world of dog-watching took place way, way back in 2008 when Elizabeth went to Poland for three weeks. While Liz and her banjo were having many international musical experiences (and one awkward hostel communal shower experience), I stayed in Cowtown to keep an eye on her neurotic bat-eared rat-dog, Chloe.

During those three weeks, my nephew Bentley developed and deep and abiding love of smallish dogs, Chloe developed a whole new set of neuroses rooted in newly developed abandonment issues, and I developed some fun ideas for blog posts that have since become some of my favorites (much like this one... My Puppy Epiphany). What Elizabeth and the other party involved in the awkward Polish hostel communal shower experience developed is anyone's guess.

Since that summer of '08, I have puppy-sat for Elizabeth approximately 873 times. In the last few years, Chloe has been joined by Willow, a shih tzu/poodle mix (which, on an unrelated note, makes for the only mixed dog-breed abbreviation more interesting than my beloved labradoodle ).

This past week, I kept an eye on Chloe and Willow while Elizabeth was house hunting in Las Vegas.

 In case you weren't aware, Elizabeth was recently lured to a Nevada teaching position by the promise of excessive heat, legalized gambling, and licensed brothels.

Ha ha! Just kidding!

I think!

What Elizabeth was actually lured by was the promise of getting paid a lot more to do less work, which is pretty much the opposite of what happens in Idaho.

And really, who can blame her for that? Certainly not me, which means that my bringing-up of that unfortunate awkward Polish hostel communal shower experience in this very public post is in no way a passive aggressive response to my newly developed abandonment issues.

An actual example of a passive aggressive response to abandonment would be tinkling on the floor... Which brings us back to the original topic of this post: Puppy Sitting.

The addition of a second pup to the puppy-sitting has made the process much more exciting. And when I say "exciting" what I mean is "filled with escape attempts and puddles of puppy piddle."

While Chloe is very intelligent, polite, graceful, and intuitive, Willow is, well, a total spaz.

I spent most of the week trying to figure her out.

One minute I was sure that she is as dumb as three bags of rocks. The next, I was certain she was an evil genius. Either way, it was a bit of a relief when Elizabeth returned and re assumed the responsibility of the two additional bladders.

And, since Elizabeth will still be around for a week or two, you might want to take the opportunity to ask her about that awkward Polish hostel communal shower experience.

Passive-Aggressively Yours,
Mindy

Dear Elizabeth,

I hope you are having a great time in Las Vegas.

Have you met the goal your sister set for you? You know, the one about swimming in the military base pool everyday? Please don't forget to bring me the military souvenir I requested. Remember, his rank doesn't matter as long as he is taller than me and is sporting a regulation buzz cut.

Everything is fine here. I am having a great time babysitting your neurotic, bat-eared rat-dog...I mean, your precious angel Chloe.

I had a great time taking care of her while you were in Poland last summer. I sure learned a lot about myself that month, and it was fun watching Chloe make new friends . It was a great lesson in responsibility, and wonderful material for summer blog posts.

I really enjoy Chloe-sitting, but to be honest with you, I was a little surprised that you were willing to trust me with your hairy little treasure after that unfortunate incident last November. That was the most exciting Thanksgiving since the year my mother discovered cooking sherry.

And now that Chloe is back in AA meetings and will soon have her "barking under the influence" charge removed from her permanent record, I think you will finally start to see the humor in the situation. Really.
Plus, I think that whole experience (along with the intervention we had for her at Christmas) has brought Chloe and I even closer together. We are even coordinating our wardrobe choices. See how my t-shirt matches her bows? We're practically sisters!

Chloe misses you, but is making the best of the situation. She loves having the bedroom all to herself. In fact, she is enjoying your bed so much that she is considering moving all of your personal items into the guest room.

Of course, Chloe doesn't spend all of her time in bed. She spends most afternoons sitting in your chair getting caught up on her reading. The Twilight series seems to be her favorite. She won't admit it, but I know she has a thing for Jacob. She always goes for the shaggy guys with a ton of emotional baggage. Oh well. I guess the heart wants what the heart wants, right?

I can tell that she misses you, though, because she is doing an awful lot of comfort-eating. I guess Egyptian cotton sheets and werewolf love stories can't fill the Elizabeth-shaped void in her life.

But don't worry about her too much. Chloe will be happy to see you when you get home, but will be just fine until then. She's decided to take up yoga and has gotten pretty darn good at it. She is a natural at "downward facing dog". So enjoy the rest of your trip. Have fun with your nieces and nephews as you savor the last few days of your summer vacation. Oh, and speaking of savoring, Chloe thinks your yoga mat is delicious, so you might want to pick up a new one on your way home. You could stop and pick one up in Utah...it would give my souvenir a chance to stretch his legs.

See you soon!

-Mindy

Makeovers

Dear Elizabeth,
I hope you and the 14-year-olds are having fun in Poland. Hey, do you remember how, before you left, you said I could trim Chloe's hair? Well, I decided to visit my folks for a couple days and, being the responsible puppy-sitter that I am, I took Chloe with me instead of leaving her locked in your kitchen. After a long day of shopping, my fashion-forward mother and I decided to do makeovers and we would have felt very guilty leaving Chloe out of the fun so... ...doesn't she look pretty? Before you answer that, please remember that I am your very dear friend who has been taking very good care of your emotionally needy basket case of a bat-eared dog for the last three weeks.
Chloe wasn't the only one getting a new look. My mom helped me change my hair color from this...
...to this. Doesn't look so drastic after Chloe's transformation, does it?

Enjoy your last few days in Europe, then hurry home.
Yours fashionably,
Mindy and Chloe

P.S. Please ignore the "dead-behind-the-eyes" look I have in the above photo. I took it very early in the morning after spending the night listening to Chloe hunt my 6'1'' 18-year-old brother. If only Greg knew how close he came to having his throat ripped out by a 10 lb., manicured killing machine...

My Puppy Epiphany (and a Polish Daydream)

I am puppy-sitting this month and, as a puppy-sitter, I have two responsibilities: feed the dog and take the dog outside so it can do its doggy business. (This is the point in the post where we ignore the logical reasoning that if I took a little break from the first responsibility, I wouldn't have to worry about the second. We are ignoring that logical reasoning because there is a good chance the dog's owner is checking this blog and would have no moral or ethical issues with hiring a large polish hit man to kill me in my sleep if I even hinted that I was thinking of mistreating her angel.)

Because said dog has to spend the bulk of her time indoors, I try to take her on several walks each day. (Oh, wait, back to Liz hiring that polish hit man to kill me...I've decided his name should Erasmo Skotnicki de Bogorya [an actual polish name...seriously I did the research!] and he could bludgeon me with a Brazilian sausage). So....if I was the dog, I would use that time out of the house to stretch my furry little legs, take in the scenery, and yap at as many neighborhood children as possible. Sounds like fun, right? Well, not to this dog. This dog prefers to smell trees. Her tree-sniffing habit seriously grossed me out because, after growing up with four brothers, I know what subhuman species use trees for (But back to good old Erasmo Skotnicki de Bogorya for just a quick second. I'm sure some of you are wondering why a Brazilian sausage would be his weapon of choice when he is a Polish hit man. The answer is that using a polish sausage would be a dead giveaway to the police. Erasmo watches CSI: Warsaw, like, every night so he totally knows how to get the coppers off his trail). So I spent a lot of time trying to pull her away from the trees. Notice I said "trying" to pull her away. Turns out, this little Paris Hilton of the Canine world has the ability to plant herself with such force that it is impossible for me to get her to move unless she wants to.
So last night, as I was waiting for her to get tired of sniffing what appeared to be a particularly pungent pine, I had an epiphany. I realized that to Chloe, the scents around that tree were telling her a story. She was reading the apparently exciting narrative of all the other animals that have spent time near that tree in the past few days. So as a teacher of literature who spends an awful lot of time trying to convince other small, fuzzy, slightly smelly creatures to read, my disgust for Chloe's tree-sniffing habit was extremely hypocritical. I can't even fault her for wanting to sniff the same tree over and over again. Just last month, I decided to re-read the last Harry Potter book, which I had already re-read about 8 times since it came out last July.
That, of course, led to me re-reading the other 6 books, in reverse order (Why reverse order? Because then instead of watching them die, I get to see all of my favorite characters come back to life as I read. Hey, don't scoff. I'm sure Erasmo Skotnicki de Bogorya the Polish hit man has read the Harry Potter series backwards at least once in his life. Right, Erasmo? At least YOU understand me).

Now don't misunderstand. I am in no way comparing the wonders of the written word to puddles of piddle left under trees....oh...well....I guess I am. But I am not comparing them in an attempt to belittle my beloved books. I just wanted to share my realization that when Chloe picks a tree to smell, digs in, and pulls on her leash like she is in the photo below, she is not all that different than me when I....
...well, I think you get the point.
So when I take Chloe for a walk tonight and she decides to spend twenty minutes with her nose pressed to the bark of a large oak or maple tree, I won't be rushing her along. After all, she could be right in the middle of an addicting story line about a forbidden love between a Rottweiler and a tabby, or a husky and a squirrel, or an accident-prone 17-year-old girl and a vegetarian vampire...
...Oh, wait. That is the story line I'm following. Hey, that gives me an idea! I wonder how many times I'd trip and fall if I tried to read while I walked Chloe. (Hummm....that's probably not a great idea. I would probably seriously injure myself, making Erasmo Skotnicki de Bogorya's trip kind of redundant. That would be very inconsiderate of me considering the cost of airfare these days, and as the above post proves, I am nothing if not considerate.)

It's Official...

...I'm Bored. Sure, I’ll admit it. I was pretty excited, exhausted, and mildly relieved last May when my classroom went from this…
...to this.

For over a month, I was thrilled to work without being interrupted to discuss the latest episode of Hannah Montana. I was ecstatic about being able to go to the bathroom whenever I wanted. I was overjoyed to be able to listen to music that wasn't Crazy Frog (ok, I still listen to Crazy Frog but who can blame me? That psychotic amphibian has talent). Then July hit. My lesson plans for the first month of school were done. My copies were run. My file cabinet was reorganized. And I started missing my kidlets.

The fact my once beautiful room has been stripped bare for summer cleaning doesn't help.

Naked bulletin board?

Obscenely Boring! Empty walls and covered book shelves?
Exhaustively Boring!
I miss pointing at things with my noodles.

I miss telling really stupid jokes that the seventh graders spent the rest of the day repeating to each other.

I miss the silence after my really good jokes sailed right over their confused little heads.

I miss the way they jump and squeal when I smack the desks with the blue noodle.

I miss the little notes they leave on my desk when they think I'm not looking. The notes that ask for seating chart changes. The notes that tattle on the kid who took two mints before the quiz. The notes that thank me for letting them be the lead surgeon in the sentence dissection relay that morning.

I even miss the way those girls in the honor's class spent half of each B-day pretending they were cats.

Today I tried to expend some of my pent-up teacher energy by explaining the wonders of prepositional phrases to Chloe, but that didn't work out so well.
The poor little pooch got so bored she ran away and hid under the table.

Chloe, I know exactly how you feel.

Wake me up when school starts.

Animal Encounters

The theme for this weekend was "Wild Kingdom". On Thursday I went with Becky, Kenna, and Kylie to the Zoo. Here is Kenna with her friend the peacock. Later that night, Greg became the 4th Eagle Scout in the family. Jenny, John, and the kids came up from Utah for the court of honor, so Greg wasn't the only one being compared to an animal at the ceremony.

Jenny's kids favorite part of the trip seemed to be playing with the dog I am puppy-sitting. Ruby wasn't actually all that fond of the dog itself...but she sure liked sharing the puppy's treats. YUCK!!! Grandma had fun taking the terrible toddlers for walks around the house. Aren't they sweet when they are holding hands?
Bentley spent 99.7% of his time with Chloe the dog. Here they are under the bench during the parade...
...unfortunately this is the end that actually faced the parade route...What cute little tails!

On Saturday it was Jenny's hatchlings' turn to visit the zoo.

Here's Ruby "yolking around" in the petting zoo.
Ruby loves animals but tends to show that love by squawking at the top of her lungs when ever she gets near one, so she required constant supervision by me... ...or Grandma and Grandpa. I'm pretty sure they earned some hazard pay on this trip.
We went to the "Animal Encounters" show where Bentley and Maxwell were hypnotized by the interesting animal information.

Ruby and Jonah, on the other hand, weren't so much enthralled as they were confused.

Maxwell was pretty excited to pet the furry thing after the show...and he didn't even ask for hand sanitizer or bleach afterwords! He is making such good progress! Soon he won't even need to line up his stuffed animals in order of height before going to bed.
Jonah kept trying to get back in line to pet the fuzzy-wuzzy again and again.
Bentley, ever the scientific observer, did more studying than petting.
The kids also got to have their pictures taken with the stars of the show...a verbally abusive bird.... ...and a hawk that spent most of the show looking like it was seriously considering eating Ruby.

Later, the boys got to touch a real lion skin. They had fun sticking their fingers in the departed kitty's nose-holes.
Bentley refused to touch it before double checking with the zoo volunteer that..."The lion isn't in the skin anymore, right?"
After the zoo, they boys got to come back to hang out with their favorite animal...Chloe! Bentley drew this picture for/of her yesterday, but she refused to look at it. I didn't want him to feel bad so I tried to explain to him that dogs can't really see flat things...so he went and stapled a bunch of extra sheets of paper to the back so it wouldn't be "flat" any more. Poor Chloe will be so bored back at home for the next two weeks without these sweet little wild animals to run around with!
Now that I think about it, I will probably be pretty bored without them too. It's a good thing school will be starting soon so I can get back to hanging out with 150 of my own wild things.