Playing With your Dog

I really annoyed Dogger this weekend : I vacuumed.

Dogger came bounding into the living room all ready to shred something and got the surprise of her life. All her toys were gone. There were no scraps of paper to tear up, no receipts to destroy, no envelopes to render useless. She was shocked! She looked at me with a hurt look in her big brown doggy eyes – What had she done now? Did she make me mad, how could she make it better? and get me to give her back her paper toys?. I took away her toys! Bad Mommy! These toys and being able to get to them being more important to her then her then ready access to her “official” toys because when she chews on her “official” toys I don’t get excited and chase her around the house screaming at her. Which is fun.

I also cleaned off the top of the dinning room table that had been growing a cone like a volcano in Mexico and had been erupting little clouds of paper for both animals to make use of. Dogger put her nose up there and instead of being rewarded by a torn envelope or a scrap of newspaper or a sales circular got her nose smacked! But this is where you kept my toys! Where are they? are you made at me? She looked at me like the worlds meanest dog mother.

She recovered and relaunched her seek and destroy mission in the living room and came up with the same nothing. This was becoming a problem. She came back to where I was standing in the dinning room, admiring my newly visible table cloth and she stood there and whined at me like I had put her toys away on accident somehow while I was cleaning and she wanted me to know it was time put them back . What was she going to do if she couldn’t get me to chase her around the dinning room table?


I mean, while I can dig the extra exercise I get by playing endless rounds of round and round the mulberry bush with Dogger - so I can make her give me back the damp shreds of whatever she found this time… it does not make for positive interaction between us. I don’t want to be yelling at her all the time. I want to sit and watch TV with her while she gazes at me adoringly. I want to live a Dog Chow™ commercial damn it! I want to have her wander freely around the house with out me having to follow her around with a rolled up magazine or keeping most of the house captive behind toddler gates.

I know of dogs can be in the house with out constant supervision. I know this is possible. Not everyone has to stalk their dogs with rolled up magazines.

Later on, after it became clear I was not going to “give back” her toys, Dogger kept herself occupied by chewing on my shoes with my feet still in them.

She totally ignored her chewys.