“Good Lord! What the...”
I jerk the earbuds out of my ears interrupting a rollicking Bob Marley
song.
It’s 9:00 A.M. and I’m huffing and
puffing and sweating my way through a workout on my elliptical and jamming to
my favorite tunes when, through my supposedly sound-deadening (and expensive)
earbuds, I’m yanked back to reality by the shrill sounds of our eleven-year-old
Cattle Dog, Sydney, scrabbling down the hallway, through the workout room and
screeching to a halt by the door to the garage with our other dog, a
two-year-old Chihuahua named Pippin, hot on her heels and just as earsplitting.
My husband ambles down the hall
after them and strolls to the door to let them out. He’s muttering, “Be quiet you two. Pippin shut up. Quiet Sydney
I can scarcely hear his voice above
the din of the dogs and (as usual) our sweet, spoiled pooches are paying no
attention whatsoever to their dad.
“Quiet!” I bellow.
Immediate silence. For a minute.
Three pairs of eyes, two brown, one
blue, focus on my sweaty face.
“Why is it so hard for you to
control these dogs?” I ask for the billionth time while glaring into the blue
eyes belonging to my husband. “Is it
really that hard?”
This is, of course, a rhetorical
question, which he doesn’t even attempt to answer while opening the door and
releasing them, screeching again, into the garage. He glares at me and closes the door, which
really doesn’t help much. It sounds like
Baskerville Hounds are slavering on the other side.
“Why are they so obnoxious for you
and so not for me?”
“Well...” he begins squaring his
shoulders in preparation for the lecture he knows is forthcoming. After all, it’s not like he hasn’t heard it
before.
I interrupt in my best “teacher
voice”, “All you have to do is make them sit and be quiet before you let them
out. I’ve told you that at least...”
“A million times,” he finishes for
me as he opens the door and steps into the lair of the hellhounds. The noise volume rises painfully and then mutes
a bit again as he slams the door behind him.
“Well,” I sniff, a little peeved
now. Climbing off the elliptical, I must set him straight. Really, I
do know better. He won’t listen and
we’ll end up in a fight. But, I can’t
stop myself. After all, I’ve watched
Victoria Stillwell enough times to be the resident dog training expert and I
just want to help.
After eighteen years, you’d think I
would’ve learned, but I think maybe if I tell him just one more time...
“You know,” I begin, stepping
through the door and raising my voice to be heard over the doggy din, “if you’d
keep the door closed until they’re quiet and then tell them they’re good before
you open it, they’d learn that if they bark, you won’t let them out.”
“The door is closed,” he replies.
“What?”
“It’s closed.”
I’ve lost all semblance of patience
by now, so I holler louder, “Don’t be so obtuse, I know it is now, I mean
before you let them out.”
“Why don’t you just tell me how to
live?” He shouts back.
“What do you mean by that, why
can’t you ever just listen?”
“Because you think I don’t do
anything right.”
“I’m just trying to help.”
“SHUT UP!” We yell in unison at the dogs. They fall silent and look at us, shiny gold
haloes hovering above their pointed ears.
“Pippin started it,” he says,
placing himself on the level of a five-year-old.
“Nuh-uhn, Sydney
“Well, your dog taught Sydney
“What?”
“Tango taught Sydney
“Tango’s been gone for nine years. What’s she got to do with anything?” I
sputter.
“Sydney
“All Cattle Dogs bark.”
“Well, she’s quiet now.”
“What?"
Indeed she was. In fact both dogs were now lying quietly on
the floor, watching us and waiting for us to be quiet so they could go outside.
“See,” he grins, “I know how to
train a dog.”
“You’re such a boob,” I try to remain stern,
but can’t help smiling too.
“Good dogs.”
Wagging their innocent tails, they run
to the outside door.
