Bad Dog

We came home tonight after our Ulster County Beekeepers Association meeting to find the kitchen floor around Willie’s crate completely surrounded by fluffy green poly-fil.  He had ripped open the base of his gray fleece-covered doggie bed, pulled out all the stuffing, then somehow managed to push all the stuffing out through the bars of the crate.  There he sat in the middle of it all, his tail-wagging, happy to see us.

We let Willie out of the crate and swept up the mess as he took a long drink from his water bowl.  “Yes,” I said, “eating polyfil always makes me thirsty, too.”   I took Willie outside to pee, and put him back in the crate with a chew toy.  Then – for the very first time – he whimpered when I turned out the light and headed upstairs to bed.  His whining and crying then awakened me at 4:30 AM. I propped myself up on an elbow, debating for a moment if heading downstairs now would encourage more whining tomorrow.

“Whining is all about getting attention,” his Louisiana foster mom Keri had warned me over the phone, “and you’d best nip that in the bud – and early.”

In a sleepy voice, Richard says, “It could be all that water he drank at bedtime.”

Willie cries out again, a sound that begins as a squeal that migrates into a pathetic-sounding “Arrooo-woo-woooo!”

I pull on a robe and head downstairs, flipping lights on as I move through the house.  I’m all business by the time I hit the kitchen, where Willie, in full-body wag, is just delighted to see me.  Without making eye contact or saying a single word, I open his crate then turn to walk through the dining room and open a door to the yard.  Willie is on my heels as we both step outside onto the frosty, moon-lit grass.  I pee.  He pees.  And then it’s back into the crate for him and back upstairs for me.

I’m awakened at six by the sound of a quacking duck – my iPhone alarm – and when I arrive I the kitchen I discover Willie has torn open the cover of his cozy crate pad and shredded half its filling.  He stares at me as I survey the floor around his crate, now littered with bite-sized bits of ivory-colored urethane foam.  Later, in the yard, for the first time in the ten days of our acquaintance, Willie does not respond to any of my commands.  And he’s now taken to hopping up on furniture where he hasn’t been invited.

It seems our honeymoon might be over.  Or maybe we’re already entering Willie’s difficult teenage phase.