Josie’s Journal #12
Josie’s Journal #12
In our first photo of Josie the day she came home she nestled next to my sister-in-law’s very white running shoes. “She’s a size 9 dog,” Gayle said. Josie was 8 weeks old then. She’s now 12 weeks old and she’s a size 18 dog. She’s bigger, faster, smarter, cuter, and has learned to fly. Yes, much to our distress, her landing pad has been our recently reapolstered beige couch.
Our airport take-off area is in what we charitably call the “wild” part of our large backyard, to distinguish it from the mowed part which we aren’t dellusional enough to call lawn. Josie seems perfectly engaged in her pastoral wandering in wild, chewing off a dried cone flower, stomping on a withering fern, digging into a seemingly unremarkable patch of ground as if it contained some precious treasure. And then, as if receiving some signal from doggy ciber space, she lifts off and speeds from wild to mowed, from mowed through the open glass doors, across the living room and lands on the couch in a perfect four point landing. She observes us with some curiosity as we come puffing after her. Why aren’t we complimenting her on her expert piloting, instead of yelling a frantic NO.
We are realists. Facing our probable inability to keep her off the couch which has quickly become her favorite playground as well as resting place, we covered eight tenths of its long length with Holly’s old blanket, piling pillows to protect the small piece of unprotected terrain at the far end.
“There,” we said, smiling in our benevolence, “ we put down Holly’s blanket for you.” Did she smile back? I think she did, but we aren’t versed yet in her facial expressions to detect it. It would have been a sly smile though. As the latest photo reveals, we had our agenda, and she had hers.
When she does decide to humor us by settling on the blanket, she brings with her one of her more disreputable toys, usually one that’s been dragged through the dirt and left out in the rain. This morning she managed to leap up with her peanut butter filled kong toy. The mess couldn’t have been worse unless she managed somehow to add jelly.
What can I say? At the end of the day when I stretch out on the couch, she leaps up too, wriggles in beside me, finds a comfortable position, usually with her head nestled between my shoulder and chin.If I can manage to swivel my head so that I can see her face, she looks at me with bright black eyes, delivers light, hot kisses on my neck and cuddles in even deeper, as if I were a sand dune into which she contours her body, and with complete trust that the sand dune won’t move, closes her eyes and goes to sleep.
