I wrote this a couple nights ago, while not hooked up to the internet:
"Nothing is more heartbreaking than a sad, old, pouting dog. I am dog-sitting 17-year-old Shep, who spends his days sighing and looking at me with puppy eyes (what else) passively accusing me of not being the person he loves most in the world: my mom.
He is deeply hurt that I don’t keep to her schedule exactly. I read on a couch, not in bed. I multi-task. I don’t study at the dining room table. It’s highly disconcerting, and he’s highly disconcerted. At his (and my mom's) usual bedtime, I tried to trick him by laying down on the bed, and, after he had settled onto his pad, rolling off the other side--at 17 his hearing and eyesight aren’t what they used to be. I felt like I was baby-sitting stubborn children who wouldn’t go to sleep.
He realized quickly that I wasn’t there anymore and did another sweep of the house to try and find my mom. I got a disappointed doggy glare when he came through this room. He’s now given up and has settled somewhere in the back.
I don’t know if I can endure three more days of a doggy guilt trip.
In other news, some of you have said that because I am from California, I don’t know cold. Now, there are parts of the country and world that are much colder than here, but when I scrape ice off my car in the morning and when we have to run water all night to keep the pipes from freezing---I am reminded that I do indeed know what cold is."
p.s. Shep has gotten over his pout. I bribed him with doggie cookies. It may be pathetic, but it works.
2 comments:
that is a really cool picture of shep. who took it? he (or she) must be a genious.
Maybe a genious, but not a genius. Although--I have photographic proof that he can shoot balls of fire from his hands.
(to my reading public: I promise not to comment on the spelling or grammar of anyone I am not related to, and even then only a select few of them.)
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