The Little Pack

You don’t see this everyday! To my knowledge, this may be the only time this has happened since Cheyenne came to live with us. Also, Cheyenne’s afghan (for back ground read here and here) can be seen in the bottom left hand corner. Speaking of Cheyenne’s blanket… last night I curled up in the chair and a half with an afghan and Cheyenne began digging at me. I got out a 2nd afghan so she could have one and so could I. I didn’t notice that I had grabbed hers. I curled up in it and started to fall asleep and next thing I know I feel someone taking the blanket off me. I open my eyes aand what do I see but Cheyenne on the floor with the afghan in her mouth, attempting to pull it off of me… I told her no, and made her curl up on the ottoman. When I woke up, she was curled up on top of both the red afghan (the one I wasn’t using) and as much of the fuzzy afghan (“hers”) as she could possibly pull of me without me noticing. Seriously, this dog is something else.

Some of you may remember the first afghan incident. Since then, the saga has continued. Somehow, Cheyenne has adopted my favorite afghan as her own. My husband’s grandma made it for me when we were first engaged.  It is super fuzzy and soft and just the right size. The other animals have all tried to adopt it as their own and failed. Through the years I have successfully fended them all off. Cheyenne, however, is a different story. If I have the fuzzy afghan, and she has a different one, she will paw at me until I switch with her. The first time, I gave it to her because I was curious to see if that’s really what she wanted. Oops. That only reinforced her behaviour. Now it is a pattern. Further, somehow I find myself carrying the blanket from room to room for her–to the bedroom at night and to the living room during the day.

Tonight one Cheyenne mystery solved: lately she has been pawing and pawing and pawing at me. Persistently. Sometimes my head, sometimes smashing my hand underneath her body. Although this sounds like a dominance thing, I must first explain that pawing is Cheyenne’s one way of communication with humans. Which, frankly sucks, because there is really no way to tell if she has to go out, if someone took her toy or bone or looked at her sideways, if she wants a treat, etc. She doesn’t vary the way that she paws, it simply means that she has something she desperately needs to tell me and she is so frustrated she can’t just speak in my language. Instead she is forced to just reiterate, Mom! Mom! Mom! with her perfectly groomed, razor sharp claws, until I finally either lose my patience and yell at her to lay down, or I miraculously telepathically figure out what the issue is. A side note: the other dogs–the former angel dogs–have also taken to pawing when they want something. This, by the way, is not how learning between the dogs was supposed to happen. Why does the bad influence always prevail? That is contemplation for another day, back to the recent resurgence of pawing.  Lately she has been taking my spot when I leave it, so more and more its beginning to seem like a dominance issue after all. Tonight, I got up and came back and there she was curled up in my chair on my blanket and I had an epiphany to the point I burst out laughing. She wasn’t trying to take my spot. She wanted my afghan. She loves afghans. She has simply been trying to tell me that she wanted a blanket. I got hers (yes, she has her own afghan) from the bedroom and spread it out on the ottoman. She immediately leaped into the new spot, made the perfect nest, and curled up happy as a clam. And now as I write this, somehow she has both of the blankets, is passed out and snoring with her body pressed against mine and dreaming I can only presume, of chasing rabbits and shrews. What would life be without this crazy brown-spotted dog?