Tricky Little Dog

Wants2Fly · Dec 17, 2004, 01:18 PM

Since placing my own two dogs in happier homes than I was able to provide last year, I have been blessed to spend much time around other people's dogs and cats.

Right now, I am staying at a friend's home near Boston. I have not been in a Northern winter for 15 years or so, so I haven't left the house since I arrived on Wednesday. Her other housemate keeps pressing bus schedules upon me and urging me to "get out." Can't seem to understand that I can be content with my books and an internet connection.

Staying with me on the bed with me is a little long-haired Jack Russell terrier named Bandit. Bandit misses her children, who are all grown now, and busy with their own lives. She is waiting for her special human, Joy, to come home from college. She spends most of her time in Joy's room, but she has generously consented to share it with me.

We, ahem, negotiated a compromise that I thought served the will of the majority (by virtue of my greater number of electoral college votes) while protecting the rights of the minority: that Bandit may sleep on the bed, so long as she sleeps on a big terrycloth towel instead of on the white feather comforter.

However, every time I leave the room Bandit has managed to sneakily slide some part of her body off the towel and onto the comforter. And if I try to move her, she acts as if I am about to beat her lifeless. I am told by my friend, however, that this is pure melodrama, much as a possum plays dead.

She is a cute little thing, so lonely without her children that my heart goes out to her.