Dog Day

Today was a dog day, especially for Harley. We went outside this morning and played with all three dogs. Maverick chased his flying squirrel frisbee while Dad and I played with the new parachute toy I bought at Franklin's yesterday. (Franklin's is a restaurant/store near work that has some of the most interesting stuff for sale. The chocolate cake is pretty darn special, too.) Mom got out the "weasel on a stick" toy and fished for Harley from the deck. We played until Mom got cold and Dad wandered off to change a lightbulb or something.

I played with my Nintendogs a while and took care of my Showdogs while I finished watching Return of the Jedi and a movie about the making of Star Wars. I still say the people at work who claim Star Wars was a regional thing are crazy, especially after watching the special, but that's beside the point. I cleaned my room and Mom, Harley and I made the bed. It's a queen size waterbed, so it takes at least two of us. Harley's help was completely dispensable.

My writer's group meets here tomorrow, so we ran to Sam's Club to get some cookies, blackberries and grapes to serve them. I know, weird combination, right? I took my buddy Chris with me via my Blackberry. (Same name, different fruit... no, not Chris, the Blackberry. Chris is not at all fruity!) Then we all... Mom, Chris and I... went to the dollar store and looked at My Little Pony notebooks and stickers for Chris.

When we got home I took the dogs outside with the giant bubble wand I bought at Walmart and introduced Harley to bubbles. He loved them. Btw, if you have been wondering what Indiana was doing while all of this was happening... he rolled on his back once and stared vacantly off into space the rest of the time. That's the height of excitement for that poor dog.

Harley helped me nap by chewing on my toes and fingers and, after dinner, I took him outside for a run around in the dark with the laser pointer. After all of that excitement we put on the Harley show for Mom and Dad and now he's collapsed on their bed while I blog.

(Notice... no writing. I'm still stuck on that darn island!)

Harley is freakishly smart

I have had smart dogs before. Penny, my beloved Shetland Sheepdog, was so smart that I used to swear she could read my mind. She knew a number of off the wall commands like, "Penny, I'm cold" which just meant that she needed to get up and cuddle closer on cold winter nights. Maverick is smart but in a lovely, gentle, regular-dog kind of way. He's obedient and fun and remembers to do what he's told more often than not, but he's not going to win any science fairs if you know what I mean. Clark, Indiana's son, was so smart he would jump in my window and get my pillows so that he could take them back out through the window and sleep on them. (Indiana is so stupid his doggy IQ is in the negative numbers, but that's a whole other story.)

Harley is a freak. Harley is so smart it literally weirds me out. It took him a little over a week to learn to roll over on command, but it took less than a week for him to learn to shake hands, speak, sit up and beg, walk on his hind legs and dance on his hind legs. Each weeknight for one week he learned a new command. It got to the point that we were running out of tricks to teach him.

Earlier today Mom asked me how I would teach him how to play dead. I rolled Harley over on his back, told him "Play Dead" and gave him some praise. I told Mom, "that's how."

Tonight, we were running through his list of tricks while I fed him itty bitty pieces of cat food. Mom said, "Tell him to play dead." So, I did... and he did!

I had never shown him other than the two second demonstration I gave her earlier, but he remembered and did it, not just once, but over and over. Ok, that is an-alien-who-only-looks-like-a-dog-mated-with-your-doggy's-mama kind of smart! I once read a book with that subject (great book) and one of the signs that the dog was half alien was that it would wind its rope around a tree and then unwind it. Harley does that, too. I'm telling you, it's not a coincidence.

He isn't even a year old yet and he's already smarter than most men. If this keeps up he's going to bypass even some of the women I know. In another year or two he could even get as smart as I am... nah, no male could ever do that.

Maverick

I had a bit of deja vu tonight. Mom called at 4:00 to tell me that Maverick had disappeared. I flashed back to Christmas Adam (the day before Christmas Eve... you know, Adam came before Eve) when I went to bring the dogs in and found Maverick in the neighbor's yard. I scolded him, he spooked and took off. He ran through the woods behind our house and I spent over an hour trying to catch him on the freeway. Eventually we had three police cars stopping traffic and trying to catch him. He eluded all of us and took off, back into the woods. I put over 100 miles on my car that night, looking for him, but he was gone.

We put up signs all over the neighborhood and looked for him late into the night, but without any luck. First thing on Christmas Eve we went looking again, putting up more signs everywhere we could. We came home to make up more signs and just before we could go back out again at 11:45, my cell phone rang. A man's voice said, "I have your dog."

Maverick had traveled about five miles down a busy street, crossing the freeway once more, to a feed store where this man found him. The guy said that he saw him at 7:30 in the morning, but Maverick was so spooked that he would not let him approach him until almost noon. Maverick's lip was bleeding, he was limping and scratched from falling on the freeway when the cops were trying to catch him and he smelled horrible.

We were ecstatic and took him with us to take down all of the signs. Everyone at every store in which we posted a sign was so thrilled that we had found our dog. But none of them were more thrilled than we were.

Anyway, when Mom called with the news that he had chewed through his rope and was gone again, all I could think was that we had used up all of our good luck the last time and maybe this time we would find him on the side of the freeway, dead, or maybe not find him at all.

Before I even hung up the phone, I had turned off my computer, grabbed my backpack and laptop and was on my way home. I didn't even stop to tell my boss I was going. I work in a really dog-friendly office, so I knew he would understand. I could not stand to lose another dog so soon after Penny. It's been less than a year since she died of old age in March. Then Tucker almost died of pneumonia and heart failure (ironically enough, that's the same combination that almost killed me five years ago).

All of the horrors of a lost dog flooded my mind and I rushed home. Before I could get all the way home, though, she called back and said she had found him. He was sitting on a neighbor's porch, probably confused about where he lives. I am beginning to think that he has a bit of senility. He is almost 13 years old and, at 65 pounds, he is not a young dog anymore. He seems happy to be home, though, and we will replace his rope with a length of chain or tie-out wire.

I don't know how much more drama I can take. I keep telling my mom that my next dog will be a ficus!

Baby Maverick




Adult Maverick