The Little Pack

Tonight I was sitting on the loveseat with Jackson next to me and Baby Titten on the armrest furthest away from me, but next to where Cheyenne normally lays. Cheyenne came and pawed at me with her razor sharp talons and I told her no. She pawed at the coffee table and I told her she was pushing her luck. She then jumped up on the armrest and walked along the back of the couch before stopping on the armrest next to me, sniffing my eyeball and promptly pawing me in the face. No one ever said she was normal. She was trying to tell me that the cat was by her spot, and yes, I am also disturbed that I understood what she was telling me. This time I decided to test her. I said, “Cheyenne there is plenty of room to lay in your spot next to the cat.” I didn’t even say any of this like a command. I said it like it is normal to reason with your dog, as though we were having a conversation. And to my amazement, she went and laid down exactly where I suggested. If Cheyenne were a person, she’d be the brilliant kid in school practically failing because she was not applying herself. My new theory is that just like the brilliant kids in school who are not applying themselves, she is really just bored and needs to be challenged. Apparently by holding conversations. We’ll see how far this theory gets me.

After the drama with Dixie the past few weeks, tonight finds me writing about a more familiar topic: Cheyenne. Also, I am thinking I have used the phrase “tonight finds me” a few too many times recently. But I digress. Cheyenne. Is too smart. For real. We have now had this unique, hilarious, spirited, stubborn dog for a little over 3 years. You wouldn’t know it, but she is 4 years old. You wouldn’t know it because until very recently she a) acted like a puppy on speed most of the time, and b) didn’t really know that much. Maybe that last statement is inaccurate: she knows plenty, just not the things I would choose, or have attempted to teach her. And to be fair, she sits almost every time now, lays down and even comes most of the time. But “Don’t smash the cat” and “Quit pawing” still aren’t going so well. So I have known all along that she is super smart, but not motivated and I finally have proof. She has this really fun game she plays where she refuses to come to bed at night and I have to put her on the leash inside the house to get her to follow me. A coworker of mine thinks she likes the extra attention, and I am pretty sure she is right. Sometimes I just show her the leash, and I say, “are you really going to make me use this? Inside? Really?” And with the last “really,” I drop my voice an octave, like I am tough, and I give her The Look. You know the one where I raise one eyebrow, and look super serious because I mean business, young lady, and pretend to be badass but really no one, even my dog, actually believes it, but it works because it plants a seed of doubt in her little brain, like maybe, just maybe, this time I mean it. And I don’t think I can actually raise only one eyebrow, but, you know, its sort of along those lines. Lately, more often than not, she then gets up and walks down the hallway and goes to bed. The other night she went into the bedroom, and while I was brushing my teeth, she slowly and deliberately wandered into the hallway and began to head back to the living room, all the while looking over her shoulder to make sure I knew what she was doing. Sternly, I said, “Shooey, no.” She waivered but decided to keep going.  Sterner yet I said, “That is e-nough. You go back in the bedroom and go night-nights. Now.” And then I employed The Look. (Note to self: use of the term “night-nights” may hamper the effectiveness of my sternness).  She did. Which proved to me she understood everything I said to her. I told she no longer had an excuse, I knew her secret. The next day she was super-excited when I came home, smashed the kitty excessively (I can’t even comment on how disturbing and ridiculous the last sentence sounds to me). So I put her in time out, in our bedroom, by herself. Which didn’t work, because she scratched at the door. So I went in there and I told her to sit and that she needed to calm down. Then I pointed at the bed and said, “get on the bed, go to your spot, and lay down.” She tried to look confused and wagged her tail as though she was unsure. Nice try Shoo Shoo. I am on to you, dog. So I pretended to raise my eyebrow, and cocked my head to the side like I meant it. And she complied. Which means she understood every single word I said to her and all 3 commands I had given at one time. They say that knowledge is power, but I am pretty sure that this knowledge doesn’t help me make her behave.

We adopted Cheyenne three years ago this week and I am finding it hard to believe that:

a)  She is four years old.

b) It has been three years since that fateful day.

I will never forget that day as long as I live. We went to the adoption fair thinking we would adopt a puppy. They were australian shepherd mixes, and of course they were cute. But we didn’t bond with any of them. We had noticed Cheyenne because of her unusual markings. She slept in her kennel and we ruled her out since we couldn’t evaluate her personality. We left and came back countless times, and finally the last time she was out of the kennel, a huge smile on her face and we both looked at each other and agreed she was the one. We took her over to a field and tried to play with her, but she pretty much stood there looking bemused with us, slightly interested, but mostly confused. That’s okay, we thought, she’s nervous, this is a stressful situation. We discussed our fear that she was “too calm.” Could we have possibly tempted Fate any more?  On the way to the car, she sat down in the parking lot and refused to move. Apparently, this was foreshadowing for her favorite ways to embarrass and frustrate us.

Three years in has me musing about how quickly time flies, how far we have come with her and how far we still have to go, grateful for every minute I have spent with her and privilaged to be sharing my life with this crazy, brown spotted hilarious dog.

Chey Before

Although not as funny as the first time, Cheyenne struck again tonight by rolling in a dead animal. Still aromatic, this time wasn’t quite as pungent. In fact, my husband said he thought it was his feet, until he realized her neck was crusty. He thought this could be taken care of with a washcloth and having experience in this matter, I just laughed. Clearly, this did not work out and he soon announced that we were putting her in the tub. The crust was down the length of her body. I grabbed a pitcher, towel, and shampoo. My husband wrapped her up in a dirty towel and carried her into the bathroom. He set her in the tub and climbed in with her. I dumped the first pitcher of water over her and was as0tounded to see the water running off her body turn YELLOW. A moment later I realized my husband’s feet were in the water and that is precisely when the laughter started. I simply could not stop. Even Cheyenne’s dejected little face and trembling body did not deter me. Post-bath, we discovered her collar was covered in guts. I can’t wait to discover what poor little thing caused this ruckus.

This week I am taking a look back some of the most memorable and hilarious stories with each of the animals. Tonight is Cheyenne’s turn and I find myself curious as to why all of our Cheyenne memories end in the word “incident”.

One day I came home thinking today was like any other day. Ha. I should have known better. I came across a cough drop—regular flavor and trust me, this becomes important—on the floor and assumed (incorrectly, of course) that Archie had found one somewhere and been playing little games with it all day. I walked a little further and found a second cough drop, again, regular flavored. Odd, I thought. But I still chalked it up to Archie. And then. I walked past the couch into the living area, and could not believe my eyes. I stood there staring for…ever… trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Tiny pieces of cherry cough drops everywhere. Partially eaten, sticky. Stuck in the carpet, and on the couch. Empty wrappers strewn about in piles. I followed the pieces of cough drops down the hallway and into the bedroom where I now found pieces of cough drops stuck to the bed, on the bedroom floor and in my dirty laundry.

I began gathering the items that would need to be washed into a pile, where I found a treasure trove of cough drops in a little pile underneath some clothes as though she was saving them for later. I picked up the pile of cough drops and Cheyenne, who up until now has been following my every move, steals several out of my hand and takes off running. So now I am chasing her, yelling at her to drop them and still in absolute disbelief and more than a little overwhelmed at the destruction in my house. Once we are back in the living room, I see the empty bag of cherry cough drops. It has been chewed open and I wonder how I missed this in the first walk through. My husband calls and I inform him what his dog did today.

I call the vet, who I just had to call the day before, because she ate half a bottle of Pyoben gel (don’t ask). I am, by the way, on a first name with all the vets at the practice. He laughs as I explain what happened, and I tell him the # of cough drops in the bag, and the amount of menthol in each cough drop. He tells me that although menthol can be lethal to dogs, she is in no danger for her body weight and the dosage she has consumed.

I realize that both a half eaten bag of regular flavored cough drops (found in tact with about the same amount of drops in it as before) and an entire, unopened, bag of cherry cough drops had been left on the dining table. Clearly, she sampled both and preferred the cherry to the regular. At the time, I blame Archie for knocking the bags off the table and assumed Cheyenne took over from there. This is, however, before we learned that she knew how to climb on top of the table. My husband comes home and we laugh and laugh, picturing the gleeful heyday she must have had when she found that bag of cough drops.  To this day, I can only imagine the play session that ensued when she realized the treasure was there, and I still laugh when I think about it.