I write this as June is adorably curled up on "her" couch, getting ready for evening slumber.
Actually, she's snoring already. Loudly. Reason being, I'm home.
One of my greatest fears in getting a dog falls in the category of dog-single-parenthood: the reality is, I have to leave the security and wonder of my apartment on practically an everyday basis. Clearly, I work, I play tennis, sometimes the 1-2 friends I have demands I go out to dinner. I must oblige. Which means, Junie is home alone. Like Kevin Arnold in December, she doesn't take this lightly or without a flair for the creative.
To be clear, I've tried crate training. She jail-broke in the most fascinating ways imaginable. June's not a lithe little thing but, wow, she's resourceful. After basically destroying her metal crate bar by bar, I've decided that it must've been a message. "Katie," she disdainfully mutters, "I can handle myself while you're gone. And I really want to sleep on the couch."
"Okay, okay," I think to myself as I leave my house with her out and about. "What could she possibly get into?"
For the record, that's the dumbest question in history. If I left her in a bare room with only hardwood floors and four painted walls, she'd figure something out, get into it, existentially transform it, and then chew it to death.
So I've become accustomed and actually impressed at some of her choices. My most favorite to date, though, is thus:
This past week, I caught on to the fact that she was dragging things out of the bedroom to examine in her "lair" comprised of the space under the dining room table between all of the chairs. Three days in a row, I'd come home to find pieces of my clothing in her lair: one shoe, a t-shirt out of the laundry, a winter hat I've been looking for for 3 years. Not destroyed or mangled, just there. Essences of me.
Knowing this, I figured out how to successful close my bedroom door whose handle falls off every time you try to use it. As it turns out, a quick but gentle sweeping motion will latch the door without making the inside doorknob fall of which, in turn, creates about an hour of panic-cum-annoyance at figuring out how to get back into the bedroom.
"What's the little one going to do now?!?" my sinister interior monologue questioned. "Maybe now just laying on the couch will seem much more appealing."
Ah, no. I came back from work and climbed my three flights of stairs eagerly, hoping to find June on her back on my couch just chillin like a villain. Instead, when I unlatched the two locks on the front door and opened it, there she was to greet me, bark collar askance, wagging her bizarrely long tail in huge circles.
Stepping in to my apartment I felt both the pride and surprise of that high school quarterback who's house has been Charmin-ed excessively by over-enthusiastic cheerleaders the night before. Running all through my dining room, around chair and table legs, draped over my couch, and through my coffee table was one long, uninterrupted thread of the double roll of Charmin I had just put in the bathroom that morning. It was like Christmas in August. And it was masterful. And graceful. And there she was, wagging that enormous tail with a look on her face that was nothing short of, "look what I made for you!"
As I wove over, across, through, and below the extremities of my furniture, gathering up in a heap that one single thread of toilet paper otherwise unspoiled, all I could think was, "touche, June. Touche." I have an artist in my midst. Now how to appreciate it.
The next morning, the bathroom door was closed. June saw that as a mere hurdle and not the end of the road. She only has 4 other rooms and a multitude of closets to explore.
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