Actually, it could be “Corgi game and set.” If there was ever any question that corgi puppies outsmart Ger-shep pups, that one’s now answered. We already knew Ger-sheps are smarter than humans, so no such question has never arisen regarding the ape IQ.
Oh, you should have been there for this morning’s trip to the vet! Make that “attempted trip…”
Three of the four captains’ chairs designed for use as passenger seats in the Dog Chariot reside in a garage cabinet. I took them out and stored them years ago, when the vehicle was hauling two 90-pound dogs around. Then came the run-up in fuel prices that accompanied the crash of You-Know-Who’s economy; at that point I decided not to put the seats back in, since I never carry more than two guests anyway and since the absence of three heavy seats would lighten the load by about 150 to 180 pounds. This means the back of the Chariot resembles a bowling alley.
Cassie habitually sits all the way in the back, up against the back gate. The space between the two front seats is jammed tightly with a plastic Kleenex box and a small basket holding bits and pieces of stuff I like to have while on the road — hand cream, sunblock, lip balm, pen and paper, business cards, and the like.
This morning, when Pup is supposed to show up at the vet for her first check and her current set of puppy shots, in she goes, into the back of the car.
It’s a 20- or 30-minute drive to the preferred veterinary (i.e., the veterinarian who meets our desiderata: a) cheap; b) not inclined to overtreat; c) commonsensical). To get there, I have to exit the neighborhood from a feeder street onto an east-west main drag; navigate through heavy traffic to a freeway; dodge my fellow homicidal drivers to reach Thunderbird Road; and cruise east about halfway to Scottsdale.
Fine.
I turn onto East-West Drag and just get settled in my traveling lane when
At my back I do hear
Pup’s squeaky voice whining near…
At my elbow, actually. She has climbed into the junk basket and is stuck.
Grab her by the scruff of the neck, place her back behind the seats, and pull an old cardboard box over to block ingress to the basket.
Twenty seconds later, she’s inside the box, out of the box, and caught between the outside of the junk basket and the front passenger seat.
Holy sh!t.
Hit the emergency blinkers, cut off one of my fellow homicidal drivers, and veer into the neighborhood to the south.
Free the dog from her pickle. Fortify the barricade. Make a U-ie and pull back into the morning traffic.
Now the whine is coming from the region of the other elbow. Dodging a murderous fellow driver, I glance down and…uhm…
Well, you know those plastic door pockets that used to be called map holders? This car has one of those. It holds a mini-umbrella, a hair brush, and…a puppy.
For godsake, she’s inside the map pocket!
HOW???????
Nevvermind. There she is.
Emergency blinkers again. At least this time I’m not in the center lane, so I don’t have to threaten mayhem to get over.
With some difficulty, free pup from automobile interior. Throw jumper cables out of the Rubbermaid crate in back of vehicle. Line crate with emergency bath towel (don’t ask). Place pup inside crate.
Back on the road. Running late. Outa my way, ya crazy fools! This would be why we own a six-banger.
Pup squalls. She doesn’t like being confined, especially not in a plastic box. Squalling stops forthwith. Whining restarts. Pup is out of the box and back in the junk basket!
Realize I yam not going to make it to the vet’s by 10 a.m. In fact, realize I’m not gonna make it anywhere with this beast unless I have a carrying crate, something that I’ve never needed before.
German shepherd and golden retriever pups are too large to squeeze through mouse-size openings.
Holding wriggly Pup on my lap, I wend my way suicidally back to the house. Call the vet: tell them there’s no way I can get the pup to their place until I can run over to PetSmart or Petco and pick up a dog crate. Their front office staff, having heard it all (no doubt), is equanimous: no problem…let’s make it tomorrow morning, same time.
Wring pup out in the back yard again; place her in her bedroom crate and flee the house, avoiding the “I told you so” look on the Queen’s haughty face.
I had already decided to buy a thing called an “X-pen,” which I’d heard about at the corgi forum. Turns out this is short for “exercise pen”: a sort of portable playpen for dogs. Someone there had remarked about what a great tool this thing is for house-training.
Well…let me put it this way: it’s 1:59 p.m. as I scribble. The washer and dryer have been going since 5:30 a.m. Pup has peed on towels inside her crate, on throw rugs, on more towels, on more throw rugs, and on and on. Plus of course the lifetime supply of blue-jeans needed to be laundered, so I can’t blame it all on the dog. At any rate, this little gal is all over the place.
Though she’s doing pretty well at training the human to take her out and let her empty herself out, she’s still too little to last longer than an hour or two. And she had a little doggy-wobbles earlier in the day, causing her to make a colorful mess in her crate and then to have to be washed in the bathtub, which then had to be cleaned. And of course this meant she needed another towel for drying. And when she’s awake, she is a very active little lady.
This morning the Big Kahuna Client sent another project, with “I hope this can be done at the earliest.” (Well. No, boss. I’ve spent the entire damn day running from pillar to post and cleaning up pee and poop.) At any rate, no matter what I’m working on, it requires blocks of uninterrupted time, and I tend to become so absorbed in the work that I don’t notice the quiet padding of little puppy feet. When she’s sleeping nearby, she tends to come so close to the rocking chair I’m afraid of pinching a foot. When she’s up, she’s really up…and like any electronics-infested dwelling, this place is festooned with electric cords. Many other hazards, not the least of which is the Queen of the Universe herself, abound.
Soon as I saw a photo of an X-pen at Amazon, I realized this was what was needed to keep pup safe whenever I can’t give her my complete, undivided attention. Didn’t want to wait for one to be shipped, so figured to go to one of the chain pet stores on the way home from the vet.
So it was up to the Petco across the road from the Ghost Mall, where I picked up the desired hardware for an almost reasonable price, plus a rope pull-toy and a kind of geodesic dome of a ball that Pup may be able to grab and carry around (Cassie’s tennis balls are too big for her little jaws). From there, up the freeway to Costco, there to get a package of bully sticks…with any luck, she’ll find these preferable to human flesh for chewing purposes. Also picked up an inexpensive bathroom mat for the pen, upon which the little dog is conked out as we scribble.
The puppy playpen is SO handy and dandy, I’m thinking of getting a second one. Though it’s easy to fold up and carry around, I suspect it could be convenient to have one on the back patio, where just now I would like to be working (it’s a preternaturally gorgeous day out there). She loves to toddle around the backyard…and she makes a beeline for every hazard in sight: the potentially poisonous plants (yum!), the frantically busy honeybees presently swarming the citrus blossoms, the delicious rocks on which one can break one’s teeth and block one’s intestine. She hasn’t even noticed the pool yet. But she’s so little that if she fell in while my back was turned, I might not hear the splash. Another X-pen would keep her safe when I’m working in the yard or absorbed in the laptop.
Speaking of absorbed in laptops, I suppose the client expects that I’m going to return his 255 single-spaced pages sometime in the next few hours. And so, to work…
Now here’s something weird: We’re halfway through the third month of 2014 — pushing the end of Q1 — and my bank balance, which should represent the total amount of money available to spend in 2014 — is exactly $2003 less than it was in January, when we started with this experiment.
