By the time you are reading this, I will have returned from my trip to New York City. I go once a year for a professional conference.
As I write this, it’s a couple of days before I leave. But one of my dogs already knows.
I have no idea how he knows, but he just does.
Yep, I get to deal with a cranky Riley until my departure.
Mae, on the other hand, is younger, and while she’s curled under my desk at my feet, she seems happily oblivious to the fact that friends of ours will be staying at our home day and night to watch over things and take care of them. She’s probably dreaming about running around the yard or wondering when it’s time for her next treat.
Not Riley, though. Nope. He’s already being a brat.
He started by coming into my office this morning. I have an upright holder for files. It’s purple and hot pink. (You can have office supplies like this when you work from a home office.) I keep it under my desk.
I was sitting here when I heard a “Clunk.”
When I looked under my desk, there was Riley. He had knocked over the file folder holder and was resting his head against it.
Yep. He’s really ticked off.
Any time now, I expect him to begin doing other things that he does when he’s miffed. Like pull the blanket out of his crate and drag it across the living room.
Or knock all the throw pillows off the couch and loveseat. (How he knows they’re called “throw pillows” and so that’s what he does with them is also beyond me.)
And if he gets really, really mad, he will pull the trash out of one of the bathroom trashcans. He will then take any tissues in them, shred them up, and scatter them around my bedroom, under the bed, and into the hall.
Yeah, I think I get the point.
The thing with Riley is that he doesn’t care. We had him trained by a professional trainer when he was a pup. He listened. Then eventually chose to ignore most of what he learned.
Don’t get me wrong; overall, he’s a good, sweet boy. Unless, of course, he gets angry. Which is usually only when we go away.
Years ago, my husband and I had a dog named Scooby. When we went out for a night, he would get ticked off and do his business right in front of the door—you know, so that we would see it as soon as we walked in.
But then, he must have completely freaked out because whenever we did get home, he would be hiding under the bed.
I imagine it a bit like this: “Oh yeah! Well, I’ll show them! I’m going to poo right here so that they can see how angry they made me!”
A minute later: “Oh no! I can’t clean this up! I have no opposable thumbs! What am I going to do! They’re going to be so angry at me…I’m going to hide under the bed. They’ll never find me there.”
We always found him there. Every. Single. Time.
Luckily, Riley doesn’t do that. By the time we return, he’s so excited to see us that he seems to forget all about having been really, really, really angry with us.
Then he acts clingy for a couple of days. Then it’s business as usual.
Because we’ve found that the best way to cure a “mad dog” is to just come back home.
Michele Wojciechowski, when she’s not hiding her suitcase and pretending that she’s not leaving town, writes “Wojo’s World®” from her home office.
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