I guess it was just a matter of time. Exhaustion takes hold and we miss the signs.
Consider the last couple of days, as we still tried to keep them calm after their surgery, when all of their puppy energy gets pent up without an outlet. They run around the house like crazed and headless chickens on a sugar rush, tumbling maniacally. The result, as I wrote earlier, was a little issue with Rosie’s incision, but nothing major.
They are not listening particularly well, however, which is probably our fault. And we are failing to pick up the signs.
There have been the pee issues of late — Rosie, for some reason, has taken to relieving herself on the rug shortly after coming in from outside. Not that she hasn’t attempted to tell us — she has. It’s just that our frustration and her constant requests to go outside — and her less-than-clear signals (she gets antsy but not in a specific way that distinguishes it from other behavior, unlike Sophie who will ring the bells by the door) — have gotten the better of us.
All of this culminated early this morning in the latest damage: a hole in our den couch. Sophie has chewed through a laptop power cord — not great, but not irreplacable. The hole in the couch, however, is a major problem. Our couches are an unusual green with tan piping and a pillow top attached to the main cushion. We can’t just sew it and turn the cushion around or over; we have to get it repaired and/or live with the obvious damage. Who knows what it will cost (laptop cord was $100), but it is money that we do not have.
It happened around 6 or 6:30 — they began bugging us at 4 and Annie let them out. Sometime after that, closer to 6, they began bugging us again. We failed to listen — exhaustion, aggravation — told them to lie down and fell back to sleep. They knocked over the gate that keeps them in the bedroom and hallway and were loose for a while.
Bad dogs, for sure, but bad owners, as well. We’ve now learned a valuable lesson: When they start bugging us like that, we have to get up.
Hank Kalet 