Day 72: Whither Thou Goest

I forgot to brush my teeth this morning. Ick! It’s Bessie’s fault for distracting me.

To get her used to being away from me, I leave her in the sun in the backyard for a while. I still keep a close eye on her from inside so I can try to stop bad habits—like digging (especially by the small hole at the bottom of the fence) or barking—before they’re out of control. When she’s sleeping in my room during the day, I’ll sometimes head for the living room and hang out there, or vice versa. But it’s not long before I hear the click-click-click of her nails, and she calls out to me:

Whither thou goest, I will go.
Wherever thou lodgest, I will lodge.

This morning she was quite a good girl, except for trying to leap joyfully up onto my tall bed at 5:55 when, you may or may not be surprised to know, I’d been sound asleep. After I took her out and she urgently did her thing, we came right back in and I dozed a little more while she hung out in my room.

Per online advice, I increased the duration of my departing-out-the-front-door routine to one minute and 15 seconds. By the time I returned, she was just getting agitated. She’s also spent a little time in her crate. Once again I lured her in there with a chew toy and closed her in for a tiny bit longer, staying in sight. We have miles to go before we sleep.

I do think that, though she’s got a ton of issues, she’s fundamentally a good and loving dog. On leash she’s attentive to passing people and dogs but has yet to be reactive.

I continue to be unsuccessful in getting her consistently to associate the backyard with her bathroom duties. To her the outdoors are where you sniff, dig and sleep. Eleni: can this be taught? Here’s what I’ve been trying: When it’s been several hours since she last performed, I take her down into the yard on the leash (she handles the stairs well now) and I zigzag her back and forth across the grass while chanting in saccharine tones, Do your duties! She usually just tries to flop down somewhere. On the rare occasion she eventually performs, I praise her to the skies and she looks confused.

I’m rocking a new look. You all know how highly fashion-conscious I’ve always been, of course, but I think that perhaps this is the trend that might catch on. There’s a certain elegance and grace to the angle of the poop bag.

My carnations are going crazy. They’re cool, except they’re pinker and less purple than I remember, and pink is really not okay with me. Astoundingly, neither canine nor sciurid has beheaded any.

I keep having this dream that I’ve returned to Vermont for grad school again, and the campus is huge, with hills and hidden valleys and drifts of snow and endless academic buildings that all look alike, and I know that every time I go to class, I will get lost and be late, and I’ve been missing class for a while, especially Anthropology and Amphibian Biology, and I forget how to get to class, and I’m just really screwing up Big-Time.