Mornings see me sitting at my computer reading a bulge of newsletters and blogs and emails filled with content that is sure to entertain or educate me. Lately, I’ve noticed a growing number of them feature a guest “columnist” every so often.
My first thought is lucky them, they get to take a week off from writing content. It’s hard sometimes to think up something new to say week after week, so fobbing it off on a guest is a great idea.
If they can do it, so can I. Going with the proverbial flow, this week, I turn this page over to Walter. Walter, the dog. Who I assume has plenty of doggy stories to tell. He spends the bulk of his days upstairs lying on the couch, his head propped up on a pillow, so surely he must be thinking of something during all his downtime. Without further ado, let’s see what he has to say …
Walter here. To be honest, this is pretty lame, her wanting to take a break this week and handing it off to me. But what could I say when she asked? She’s the one feeding me this week, and if she turns on me, what am I going to do? Food is the key to my happiness. Without it, life is nothing. Dinner is my second favorite part of the day, beaten out only by breakfast at number one. In fact, I wish they’d give me dinner right after breakfast and repeat that again later in the day.
Speaking of food, and lack thereof, while Grandma’s here looking after me, that’s probably my number one complaint: how little she feeds me. She has no sense of sharing whatsoever. I thought grandparents were supposed to spoil their grandchildren. Am I not a grandson too? Oh, sure, one time she gave me a piece of raw broccoli. How generous. I don’t even like broccoli. The food situation is nowhere near as dire when the entire family is here, especially the boys. They’ll give me anything. I don’t even have to ask.
This whole “Grandma’s coming over to dog sit” came as a huge surprise. No one told me that the family was going away for a week. I never even saw them leave. They must have snuck out in the middle of the night. The next thing I knew, Grandma’s patting me on the head and telling me what a good boy I am. She does this a lot, and never once does she offer me a treat while she’s at it. Mom always gives me a treat when she tells me I’m a good boy.
I miss Mom.
Anyways, I didn’t believe the family was gone, and even though earlier in the day I had refused to go down the stairs in order to take Grandma for a walk, I decided on a whim that now I would go downstairs, just to see if the family was hiding in the basement.
I couldn’t find them, so I came back up the stairs. Except for that last step up into the hallway, the wood-floor hallway. I don’t like wood floors; I am a carpet man. This is neither the time nor the place to explain myself. It is what it is.
So I’m standing there, front paws on the top step. I continue to stand there. Grandma walks by periodically and says, “You can do it, Walter.” She even thought she could trick me by placing a treat on the floor just out of reach. Like that was going to work.
I keep standing there. By this point I’m not sure, existentially, why I am there, but Grandma’s gone off to bed and I have no one to ask. I start to whine. That gets Grandma every time. Out she comes from the bedroom, and wait until you get a load of this. She tries to pick me up, ostensibly to carry me up to the wood floor. Now, I’m a big dog, good and solid — and no one is picking me up. Especially not Grandma. I let her know this in no uncertain terms.
I see Grandma’s brain whirring. With no encouragement from me, she figured out how to get me up to the wood floor. What she did was take me downstairs, out the front door, around to the back, and up the outside wooden staircase and into the house the back way. I have no problem with wooden steps. Wood flooring is a problem, but wooden steps not so much. There’s no need for me to explain. Oh, and once I got back inside, I made a beeline for the one measly treat she’d used to entice me earlier. I’m just glad I got there before she scooped it up.
One thing about Grandma is good, though. When we go for walks, she lets me run through the puddles ankle deep, slurping up the water as I splash my way through, There’s this one place with three long puddles in a row, and it’s like a dream come true. On today’s walk, I turned around and went back through them a second time. I am pretty sure Mom would’ve yelled at me, “Ew, get out of there, Walter!” But you know grandmas, they just love to spoil their grandkids.
This week, in memory, Jimmy Cliff …
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