My dog is driving me crazy at the moment. She will not stop whining and scratching at the glass patio door no matter how many times I tell her that she cannot come in until she is dry. It makes me glad that Nugget is old enough to understand explanations. It hasn't been that long, but I'd already forgotten the daily frustration that goes hand in hand with the cuddly sweetness of babyhood.
The fact that Kiara--the dog (and no, I didn't name her, my Irish-name-obsessed sister did, but it's better than Lelu, which is what her previous family called her. She no longer answers to it. And who could blame her? They were the second family to abandon her before she was a year old. I'd want to forget everything about her life before me too.)--is soaking wet is completely her own fault, and I warned her it would happen, but "I told you so" is not that satisfactory when you say it to a dog. Who turns her head and cocks an ear and then barks again to be let in.
We went for a walk/run on the beach (most of the running was her, but I did run enough to get my heart rate up, which is something, for someone who abandoned her nascent soccer career after one day of practice freshman year of high school because there was too much running) and she insisted on going in the water. I managed to keep her from going in past her knees (which she wanted to do because there was kelp floating out there and she just had to know what it was), and she might have escaped without the full-body bath under a freezing cold hose when we got home if it weren't for this:
The standing water along the path to the beach was so thick with algae that it looked like solid ground. Appealing, right? I'm literally steps from the car and I look back to see where Kiara is, and she is actually going into that algae water. I could not believe it. What goes through that dog's head? I briefly considered making her run alongside the car rather than let her in the car with stinky algae-water dripping from her fur and stinky-algae-mud on her paws. And then I remembered that the back of my car is already covered in sand and dog hair and dried dog drool. Not to mention the toddler crumbs all over the middle seat. Plus the sunscreen that I was wearing on the way to the beach on Sunday, which got all over the front seat and, inexplicably, all over the outside of the car as well. So I loaded Kiara in and reflected that there is something to be said for a dirty car.
The other day when I took Kiara to the vet they told me that there are two boxers up for adoption at the humane society right now. "My husband would kill me," I replied. I went home and told him about it and he said, "No I wouldn't. You can adopt them if you want." My mouth hung open a little, and I wondered whether Trent had forgotten the regularity with which my separation-anxiety-riddled Kiara pees in the house when she's left alone. "You'd just have to move out," he continued. Oh. I guess I'll pass.
