Dog-Sitting

This weekend I dog-sit for a teacher in my school. She is absolutely devoted to her dogs, and I feel when I dog-sit, or baby-sit, I should do my best to simulate the care given by the primary caregiver. So I am pretending to be devoted to these dogs. It's not difficult, because they are adorable.

She and her husband have raised so many bassets, and she currently is raising 2. I am dog-sitting for three bassets, because her son's dog is over for the weekend. Their names are Katie, Heidi, and Clancy. Clancy is the visitor, and as named by my friend the teacher, Clancy is the devil-dog. I didn't appreciate this name until Clancy started bothering the magazine rack. I don't know what she thought the magazine rack had done to her, but she was hollering at it while I was trying to enjoy the Simpsons. Heidi and Katie had taken what I assume were their everyday places on the couch.

I went to find out what the magazines were doing to provoke Clancy, and she decided I should stay out of it. She bit my hand, I think to protect me from the magazines. That's when I swatted her behind, to protect her from the magazines. She decided the magazine hunt was too dangerous and she assumed her place on the chair across from the couch, where she took up a battle with the television across the room. This didn't involve physical contact with the television as it had with the magazines, just more barking.

Last night we slept in the guest bedroom, the dogs needed help getting up on the bed. But they insisted on protecting me all night, as I was their guest. Katy even insisted on personally keeping me warm. Everything that happened cannot, and should not, be related. What happens in the guest room will stay in the guest room. I will just say that I was warm and cuddly all night long.

This morning I went to sit on the couch in the den, which has sliding glass doors that allow a direct view of a tree with a bird feeder. There was a bluejay there eating of the feeder, and there were several squirrels there eating seeds off of the ground. One of the squirrels had an ingenius trick for eating out of the bird feeder, because apparently those were better than the ones on the ground. This squirrel would climb the tree to the height of the feeder (about 4 feet off the ground). He would then cleave to the tree with his hind legs and lunge toward the feeder with his forelegs. He would hold the tray of the feeder with his front paws while eating frantically until his hind legs couldn't hold him anymore. When he fell, he would eat the seeds off the ground until he regained strength enough to climb the tree again for some more warm seeds.