Good Boy

Dryer people come to the gate. Scrubby greets them. He barks repetitively to let us know that someone is here. Our doggie-doorbell if you will. It's strange when your front door is a gate and not a door. I still don't know what to make of that. Or how to use it.

I tell them the dryer people that it's okay. I've learned how to say, in Portuguese, that he doesn't bite. I open the gate. Scrubs allows them to come in. I am so proud of how he is handling visitors. This is exactly what a dog should do. Alert you to the presence of a new person, but when you accept the new person, the dog should accept the new person. Scrubs has been doing exactly that.

I walk them into the dryer room and grab a few doggie treats off the shelf in the laundry room. I have found that if I have treats, Scrubs is more interested in me and leaves the visitors alone. It works, but midway, he sees that they have pulled the dryer out from the wall and it spooks him. He starts barking at both men -- confused about this dryer and obviously feeling that it might be some sort of outer space machine that could kill us all. I decide to put him in another room so they can fix the spaceship in peace.

I take the remaining treats and quickly tuck them in the waste band of my shorts. Didn't want the kids grabbing them off a counter that I might have set them on, and unable to return them to the doggie container they came from since it is in the cabinet next to where the men are working.

Later, after the men fixed the dryer and we said good bye and thank you in Portuguese, I released Scrubby. I gave him the remaining treats.

And yet he continued to follow me around the house. Sniffing me. Annoying me. Wouldn't leave me alone.

When, an hour later, I sat down to drink a glass of water and sat on one of his treats, I figured out why. One of the bones had slid down and was stuck in the my underwear. I was wearing running shorts, with attached underwear, I didn't feel the treat or know it was there until I sat on it.

Now broken, it was no worse for the wear so I tossed it to Scrubby.

He ate it merrily.

And immediately stopped following me around the house.

Good boy.

Fun times.