If I were a Dog......

If I was a dog in my house, I would live on a few acres nestled in the bosom of hundreds, even thousands of fence free acres. Well, not entirely fence free, but no 5 string wire fence could keep me in or out. I would be blessed with friendly neighbors who wave me on my way, and I'd be free to chase squirrels, rabbits and coyotes but I would soon learn chasing cats, horses, donkeys and cows are off limits. No matter, there are always buzzards to chase, too  -  and they fly! Which is both incredibly exciting and extraordinarily infuriating, so I'd bark my head off and jump up and down, which is great exercise. But I'm a dog, so I'd get over it pretty damn quick and go sniff out a fieldmouse.

I would soon learn that my people are easy to train, especially the female one. A day in my life would look something like this:

As soon as she stumbles out of bed, I put on my happiest, smiliest, waggiest face and refrain from commenting upon her lack of coordination and style. That seems to come later in the day with some humans. I present myself for a good morning rub and now that I have her trained, she immediately complies; fortunately, her motor skills still go that far even this early in the day. I am told how crazy, cute and handsome I am while I hustle and jostle my fellow dogs for her attention and we try to knock her off her feet, which so far has not been a successful venture but a dog can dream. It might knock the bag of treats out of her hand and let us at the yummy little suckers.

Now we allow for one of her little idiosyncracies - that is Good Dog Rule #1. Always allow your human their idiosyncracies -  it allows them to feel good about themselves if they think they are in control.

So we all sit prettily and smile for her while she hands out our morning treats. This, of course, makes no sense at all because what dog eats sitting down? But like I said, it's an idiosyncracy popular with humans and we allow it. She tells us this is for our own good to prevent a free-for-all ruckus. I don't know what her problem is with the ruckus, sounds good to me.

After treats we re-present for rubs and ruffles and then we are off into a magical world of scent and sights of major dog pleasing proportions. We run and play and roll in all manner of wonderfully smelly stuff, the cowpatties especially get a big reaction out of our humans and we dogs like to get big reactions, so we do our best to roll in good smelling stuff. We also eat all kinds of interesting things that happily, the humans seem to have no interest in so we don't have to share, though, of course, we would if asked.

That's Good Dog Rule #2 Always share with human when asked. It's my favorite rule because they never want to share my best stuff, like horse apples and old bones and the occasional dead something or other that we come across in our travels.

Then we show up back at the house and wait for her to come out and give us our mid morning scratches and tell us what stinky dogs we are. Stinky and silly but happy, she calls it, and then she shakes her head and rolls her eyes. Not sure what that is all about. Humans can be pretty incomprehensible at times. The only smell we have learned to avoid is skunk, because that brings on all manner of strange bathing rituals. I cannot for the life of me figure out why they think tomato juice and vinegar make for a nice perfume.

Then it's time for a mid morning nap, while the humans get busy. This of course is quite bizarre, for every dog knows you need a good nap 7 times a day, starting with right after the morning excursion. In fact, days are made for napping and we do lots of that, in the sun, in the shade, on the porch, in the middle of the field. But humans will insist on forgoing any nap it seems. Oh well - it's their loss.

If I'm lucky - and one of the little dogs - she will be running errands and I will get to go for a ride, hanging my head out the window, catching one intriguing scent after the other and barking at dogs as we roll on by.

 

 

But now comes the best part - after a day of hard napping and a few run abouts, it's dinner time. So we start barking and scratching doors and sitting in front of her window looking pathetic and - reflecting her excellent training courtesy of our pack effort - dinner soon appears. Some days she is a better cook than others. But we are good dogs who like to make her happy and eat up regardless, all except Chico who is ancient and picky and likes to talk her into hand feeding him. That's a trick I am studying, but I think I have to be alot older before she'll believe me.

Now we study the nightskies and howl with the coyotes, chase the bunnies coming out to eat at night and take an after dinner nap. After dinner naps are favorites because we are full and sleepy, but then she will insist on waking us up to come in for bedtime, because otherwise we will bark and howl and wake her up, and unlike dogs, she does not like to be woken up every time something interesting happens, like an owl flies over or the neighbors dog comes by or a skunk passes through. But we comply ( see Good Dog Rule #1) and curl up on our cushy dogbeds in the mudroom and nap the night away.

That's Good Dog Rule #3 Sleep every chance you get. Humans love a dog that can lie down and relax when not expected to perform.

Yep, if I were a dog of mine, that would be my life. It's a dog's life, alright. And I want it.