Volt spent more time outside than I did today. More time than he wanted to. When I wanted in, HairyFace would open the door for me, but tell Volt, “Not you; you stay outside with me.”

Volt sat and peered through the door at me. “Why won’t he let me come in with you Cochise?”

“Do you remember yesterday, when he let you come inside unsupervised.”

“Yeah”

“And you got up on the dryer and ate all your door training treats?”

“Yeah: they were YUMMY!”

“That’s why.”

“Oh…”

When Hairy did come inside, Volt was eager to come in too.  But instead of curling up on a bed, he liked sitting at the window watching Blondie and the goings on in the yard.

It may be a while before Hairy trusts Volt with being on his own inside again.

Dogs appreciate comfort. Most living things do. Maybe not snakes: snakes don’t seem to appreciate anything. But dogs do. We like having comfy places to sit and sleep as much as Peoples do. We can be trained to stay off the Peoples furniture — especially if we have furniture of our own to be comfy on. But training dogs to respect the property rights of other dogs in the house is harder to do. We pretty much figure a dog bed is a dog bed and we’ll take whichever is available and looks most comfy to us.

We sometimes get a little opportunistic about things. Like the time HairyFace was going to vacuum the den and stacked all the dog beds from that room across the hall … and that looked pretty choice to Volt.

The thought that we can sit or sleep wherever we choose has gotten me into a pickle once or twice too.

.

But that was resolved easily enough. I’m not unreasonable … I can be bribed.

Now that Volt is sleeping in the bedroom with the rest of us at night they don’t put a snuggle bed in Volt’s room any more: just a folded up blanket. He only stays in there when The Peoples go away for a while and when we eat meals.

We do (technically) each have a dog bed that is “ours” and at night we do tend to go to our own place and get into our own bed without having to be told. But there is no hard-and-fast rule about that. And, if one of us gets up in the night, we will probably come back to find our bed occupied. But that leaves the usurper’s bed available, or we can go into the den: there is a bed in there all the time, or we can go to the living room: there are two beds in there. So it’s not like we don’t have options.

Of course we CAN make a fuss about having our bed stolen: whine about it until a Peoples wakes up and sends the bed invader back where they belong, but that tends to make Peoples cranky, so it’s usually better to just find another spot to sleep.

During the day, there are no property rights. We sleep wherever we want and no one can lay claim to anything. And we’re usually okay with that.

HairyFace broke out a new hoofie. A hoofie is an all-natural chew treat: a cow hoof.  It was Blondie’s turn to get first crack at it. We take turns at one hoofie because even if we each got one, we’d want the one someone else has.  When she gave it up, I took over.

Volt patiently watched me chew until I decided to go outside. Before I got up I rolled the hoofie over to Volt. He’s being a good boy about taking turns.

Volt was happy to get his turn, and enjoyed chewing until Blondie decided it was her turn again. But she would not take it away from Volt … she’s more subtle than that. We’re very civilized about the whole thing.

Blondie is good at the “Oh, look, what is this?” ploy to get someone to give up what they’re doing and go look.  Then she slips in and takes over the treat or bed, or whatever she was after.  She’s a clever one, that Blondie is!

It’s Saturday morning so it’s HairyFace’s turn to fix a fancy breakfast. While he was doing that, Volt was being very good; supervising Hairy’s work, but staying out of the way and keeping four-on-the-floor.

When Breakfast was finally ready, so was Volt. “Smells YUMMY!”

It was a nice morning so we all went outside to play in the yard. Blondie has a kind of strange idea about what a Coolaroo is for… it is NOT a trampoline, sis.

Rain moved in this afternoon. That’s OK. Hairyface says he needs some rain for the lawn.

Oakley came calling when the rain stopped, so we all had to go out and “greet” our neighbor (by running along the fencing and shouting our joy at seeing him again).

Blondie’s stumpy legs and pounding stride means when she comes in from a muddy yard, the Peoples have to wipe off her belly as much as her feet.  I joke that she needs mud flaps.

Volt has twice the ground clearance that Blondie does, so he just needs his feet dried — but he likes being toweled off and insists on the full package.

Me: I’m light on my feet so I don’t send up such a spray. My belly stays cleaner than Blondie’s: unless I lay down on the mud, and I try not to do that.

It was just after 12:30 at night. We’d all been in bed long enough for the Peoples to be sound asleep. I was in my bed by the wall, across from the door to the hallway. Blondie’s bed is near Volt’s. Volt said, “Blondie, you awake?”

“I am now. What is it?”

“I’m hungry. You hungry?”

“I could be. What do you have in mind?”

“I have a plan to raid the kibble treasury. Want to come?”

Blondie Bear is not starving: pretty far from it, actually, but is not one to turn down a snack. Ever! I do. If I’m not hungry or if the snack is not up to my standards, I’ll pass. I was more interested in my warm snuggle-bed than in some goofy scheme that might or might not net some food. I laid still and watched.

None of this alerted the Peoples because dogs don’t always have to make sounds to talk. A lot of our communicating with each other is done with our brains, not our mouths.

Blondie said, “Okay, I’m in. What do you want me to do?”

Volt got out of bed and crept out of the bedroom, Blondie followed. They stopped at the hallway bathroom door: sometimes called The Kibble Treasury because that’s where the Peoples store the dog food.

When Volt first came inside the house, HairyFace had to keep that door closed because Volt was too excited by the possibilities a room containing almost 700 pounds of kibble offered. In time Volt learned to respect that room as off limits. Then the door started being left open again.

“Okay, Blondie, you stay here in the hallway as look-out. You let me know if anyone is coming. I’ll try to crack open one of these kibble vaults. Then we can both fill our bellies!”

Blondie looked at him kinda sideways, “I … I don’t know about this Volt. This is “bad dog” behavior. If we get caught …”

“That’s why you need to be look-out. You let me know if anyone gets up so I can get out.”

“And what happens in the morning when they find a bin busted open?”

“Easy: we blame it on the cat!”

“We don’t have a cat.”

“Oh, yeah … well … You really need to get a cat, you can blame it for so much stuff!”

“We don’t have a cat.”

“Let’s worry about that later. First we need to get a bin open.”

“I could use a snack.” Blondie thought about it for a moment, “Okay, I’ll keep watch.”

Volt ambled into the bathroom and started nosing around. “I’ve been watching HairyFace when he fills our bowls, our kibbles are in these bins on the floor. He just lifts the lids and scoops out kibbles …”

Volt pushed the lid of the red bin with his nose (I know this because Blondie told me all about it later). He tried several places, but could not get the lid to lift. He moved to the purple bin and tried that one. No luck there either. So he tried pawing at the lid, scratching at it with his claws. That didn’t work either.

He tried to dig under the bin by digging at the floor.

“Someone is getting out of bed! I think it’s Hairy! You’d better get out of there!”

HairyFace was indeed getting out of bed, awakened by the scratching. He probably thought one of us was at the back door asking to go outside. When he turned the corner into the hall, Blondie and Volt were bouncing around in the hallway.

“Do you two need to go outside?” He asked, still mostly asleep.

Blondie and Volt decided that was a great redirection and rushed into the laundry room. Hairy made his way through them to the door, undid the deadbolt, flipped on the porch light and opened the door. Both of them rushed out on the porch – and stood there.

“I don’t NEED to go out in the yard,” wailed Blondie to Volt, “and I don’t want to get my feet wet in the dew.”

“This could still work out.” schemed Volt. “The Peoples have been training me not to scratch on the screen. If I scratch gently, down low like you do, or if I call them, like Cochise does, or if I just sit there, being real good until someone notices me, I get a treat when they let me in. The treats are on top of the hot box thing NiceLady uses to heat our blankets. All we have to do is be good and wait for Hairy to let us back in!”

“Maybe. Hairy does not like it when we get him out of bed in the middle of the night.”

“Let’s try it.”

So they both sat there on the porch while HairyFace went to use the bathroom.

Peoples get to go potty inside the house, dogs have to go outside. I don’t understand how that’s fair at all, but it seems to have something to do with that big white water bowl thing. They only go in that, not wherever they want. Maybe one day they’ll train us to use that, then we can stay inside when the weather is bad.

“Okay, so what kind of funny game are you two playing at? Neither of you left the porch.”

He opened the door and let them inside. They both sat obediently in front of the drier and gazed expectantly up at the place where the treat bag stays. Volt even licked his lips.

“Oh, no!” Hairy said, “You two get me up so you can play games, hoping for treats? No … everyone back to bed.”

Blondie quickly slunk back to her bed and curled up. Volt thought about pressing the issue: he HAD refrained from scratching the screen, after all. But Blondie’s quick departure made him think again and he too returned to his bed.

HairyFace stopped in the hallway, thinking about what had gone on: the noise that woke him, the two dogs in the hallway acting odd, the refusal to leave the porch … he pulled the bathroom door closed, muttering, “Just to be sure.” before returning to his bed.

“I knew that wasn’t going to work,” Blondie said, “you almost got us both punished.”

“I almost got us both fed.”

“Humph! Hardly.”

Both closed their eyes and drifted off to sleep. Now that it was all over I did the same. But I couldn’t help chuckling at Volt. He’s come a long ways, but he’s still got a few things to learn. I’ll have a talk with him about trustworthiness in the morning. I’ll straighten him out. He’ll be okay. He’s a good dog at heart, as long as he doesn’t listen so much to his stomach.

WOW! What a fun day I had with HairyFace.

It started with a truck ride: I LOVE truck rides!  We went to Tractor Supply Co. in Newport. When we got to the store the doors slid open and I backed away. Hairy tried to get me to go in, but I started talking to him in my deep growly voice: (rowr, rowr, rahr, grrow) and turning to go down the sidewalk. He finally caught on: I needed to pee and didn’t want to go in the store until I took care of that. I wouldn’t want to get excited and have an accident. We went down to some bushes, I relieved myself, and was ready to go inside.

The ladies at the check-out counter gave me some yummy treats and fawned over me. I ate that up of course. As we went through the store I bounced up to some people we passed and said, “Would you like to scratch my head? It’s really fun, you’ll like it!” Most grinned and scratched my head, One got big round eyes and backed a way. Must have been a cat person. There wasn’t any real issue, Hairy had me on a real short leash and wasn’t going to let me get close enough to jump up on anyone.

We got our supplies, I stood up at the counter and watched as they rang us up (they laughed and gave me more treats) and we loaded up into the truck.

Next we went to the drive-through cookie store and saw Pam Athebank. She and Hairy exchanged slips of paper (I never have figured all that out) but she also smiled at me a lot and said, “What a handsome boy you are!” And she put a peanut butter cookie in the drawer for me along with Hairy’s papers.

Then we went to see Dr. Sandra at Cedarwood Veterinary Hospital. She poked and prodded and felt me all over. She listened to my insides. She stuck me with needles too (I didn’t like that). Once she sucked out blood (that hurt), twice she pushed some stuff into me. But I was very good and I got lots of treats for being cooperative.

Best of all is that when I weighed in, I’m down to 85.1 pounds: my ideal weight! Dr. Sandra was so pleased with me for losing 20 pounds since my last annual exam. HairyFace says that’s partly due to the thyroid medicine I’m taking, but it’s also because I do a lot more running in the yard now that I feel better.

And because Hairy starves me.

When we got back home I got to lay on the stone plank out front in the sunshine and rest up. And I *needed* to rest up after all that excitement! That was a really fun day! Even the blood sucking part wasn’t all that bad.

Each of us dogs has our own way of letting the peoples know when we need something. Take, for instance going in or out the door to the outside.

Blondie’s approach is the same whether she wants out or in: a light scratch on the metal panel in the bottom of the storm door. If the wooden door is closed, she’ll scratch that –but that’s discouraged.

For me, if I want outside I “talk” (gar-rar-rar-roof) and go to the door. Sometimes I forget and bark first, if the reason I want out is real exciting, but HairyFace won’t open the door until I settle down and speak my request instead of shouting it. When I want back in, it’s one loud BARK! This just lets them know I’m at the door and waiting.

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