Tag: Rosie and Sophie

We took the puppies for a nice long walk last night, heading over to my brother and sister-in-law’s so my niece and nephews could see the dogs before they left for Iowa for the week. Aside from the wind and the rain that arrived as we did at their house, the walk was uneventful, though I almost had what I’ll call a Garp moment.

I don’t know if anyone remembers the scene from the 1982 movie with Robin Williams, “The World According to Garp,” in which Williams as Garp goes off on a pickup truck that has been terrorizing the neighborhood by speeding through the quiet suburban streets. But that is how I’ve been feeling lately as we’ve been getting out with the dogs. The number of speeding cars, vans and SUVs — and, no, it’s not just teenage drivers — barrelling around this neighborhood, on Kendall, New, Kingsley and even some of the side streets, is mind-boggling. I said to Annie the other night that I think they drive faster on Kendall than they do on New.

Last night, as we walked, I flashed to the scene in the movie. Garp has reached the boiling point as the same driver of the same red pickup flies through his neighborhood. He takes a baseball bat and chases him and blasts the truck.

Needless to say, I’m not vindictive or violent and I’m the law-abiding sort, so I let the moment pass. But I can see how that kind of overreaction could feel real satisfying.

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.

The puppies are done with training and, while we don’t always realize it, they’re doing fairly well. They are a smart pair — and any problems we are having are really our fault. We’re pushovers.

In any case, the trainer, Pat, dressed them in caps and gowns — a goofy thing that I wasn’t crazy about (dogs, after all, never seem all that comfortable in clothing and I find all those goofy photos I see on the Web and elsewhere a bit, well, goofy). But they were cute in their red caps and gowns, as you can see from the photos, and Annie really enjoyed it.

I like the red, myself. It reminds me of my Rutgers graduation — I was in black and the female grads were in red, like my female pups.

What I find interesting is that they seem to have the same expression on their faces as I did when I had to wear the cap and gown during my Rutgers graduation — a mix of happiness, finality and utter annoyance at the officiousness.

But then, I’m probably reading way too much into it.

Jody, our neighbor’s dog, has been checking the pups out lately. At first, it seemed like Rosie and Sophie were a bit scared and Jody, who must be around 10, was wary. Now, however, all three seem a bit more comfortable seeing each other.

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required.

We arrived home tonight about 7 p.m., long day of work behind us, to a bit of a surprise.

Looking in the window, there were dozens of dog toys littering the living room. I left the house today at 10:45, the toys in the dogs’ toybox, but we have a friend’s college-age son walking them at midday. I figured he let them play with the toys and left them where they were when he left — no problem.

Except, that’s not what happened. As I took out my keys to unlock the door, Annie saw Sophie in the living room, loose. Loose?!? Was Rosie out, too? Sophie had escaped from her pen, somehow leaving Rosie behind. What happened? Did she leap the gate?

Turns out that Carlo left the lower gate hinge unlocked — or so we think — and Sophie, who is the burlier of the two pups, pushed her way through. Rosie, thinner and faster, probably couldn’t do so.

It was a bit of a scare, but there was no damage — Sophie confined her business to the newspapers by the entranceway and we’d closed the doors to the bedrooms.

But it was the culmination (I hope) to a trying week during which both Annie and I were at the end of our wits — they weren’t listening, were peeing in the house, picking up every leaf and stick outside and eating them — just a very frustrating time.

I think we my have contributed to it, however, because we forgot that they were puppies and were showing our frustration. And in our effort to not hit the dogs or react in anger, we were coming off whiny and losing control of them.

I’m hoping that, by recognizing our own failings in this mission, we can do a better job with them, take control and regain our own sanity.