Your Dog is Dumber than My Dog...I Hope

Jill and I are finishing up our week visiting family in Iowa. That means we're getting ready to go "home" to Denver (it still sounds a little strange to say that). It also means that we're bracing ourselves for the report we'll be getting from our friends Kevin and Lynn, who have been watching Daisy-the-Wunder-Mutt while we've been away. We're preparing ourselves for the worst--but consoling ourselves with the knowledge that their dog Zeke(whom we watched during Thanksgiving break)is dumber than our dog. At least we hope he is.

Here is the standard Zeke set--the one we hope Daisy will not quite be able to attain.

1. Zeke cannot poop in one spot. This is not as endearing as it sounds. Zeke (who is one of those big dogs who looks hunched over and awkward to begin with) walks in circles as he poops. It's the first thing he does when he hops out of the back of the Robert's Subaru. And he does it at night, on our walks, too. Believe it or not, squinting in the pale moon light as I hunt for stray dog turds is very low on my list of favorite things to do. As this is a family blog, I won't get started on what happens to the rest of his anatomy when he's working on all this.

2. Zeke is prone to anxiety attacks. When we had him at our house for a few days this summer, the Roberts dropped off a few pill bottles with his leash, dog food, bed, and water bucket (by they way, he needs a bucket, not a bowl, as he drinks/drools an incredible amount. This could easily be point three, in my opinion.). They explained that one was a prescription for the really serious attacks--the Fourth-of-July-Fireworks type. The other was an over-the-counter drug for the less serious thunderstorm-induced attacks. Well, I'm glad we didn't have Zeke around for fireworks, because the "minor" attacks are annoying enough. Zeke cowers in a corner, shaking, or sticks to your side so closely that you can't go to the bathroom without him following you there. Thankfully, the drugs do a sufficient job of knocking him out.

3. Zeke is a delicate sleeper. We first discovered this delightful idiosyncrasy when we tried to gate him into a room downstairs. This was successful for a few hours. But sometime around 4 am, we heard a loud CRASH as he came through the gate (not over it). The next night, when we let him sleep upstairs in the hallway with Daisy, we couldn't keep him from pacing in and out of our room and up and down the stairs, whimpering, trying to crawl under our bed, and generally acting very nervous (see pt. 2, above). After a few hours, we discovered that one of the things that was bothering Zeke was a very subtle "chirp" from one of our smoke alarms. I still don't know which one (or why it was chirping, since they don't run off of batteries), but I did look. Eventually (around 2 am), I ended up standing on a chair in my boxers muttering less than affectionate things about old Zeke as I yanked out the smoke alarms--only to discover that that makes them chirp even more. In fact, they just may be possessed, since the keep on chirping even when the back-up battery is removed. By 2:30 am, all of our smoke detectors were piled outside on our back porch. I consider it evidence of spectacular self control and restraint that I managed not to throw them into the street where I could back over them--repeatedly--with the car.

There are a few others--but that should give you a sense of the standard that has been set for Daisy. Like I said, I really hope that Zeke is dumber than Daisy so that we don't have to feel too bad about whatever terrors she's inflicted upon the Roberts. And I also hope that, if the Roberts read this, they know that, really, we love Zeke, he's wonderful, and we'll happily take him again. At least if you're willing to take Daisy.