Happy Pet Story

For some time I have been worried about our Spaniel. She is a Working Cocker and because she hasn’t had her intelligence diverted towards being a first class gun dog, as she should have been, her brainpower is instead largely dedicated to being complicated or naughty. Her latest stunt has been refusing to settle at bedtime.

I’ve been trying all sorts of tricks to deal with the problem. First, I tried bribes with increasingly delicious treats (cheapo biscuit then more expensive biscuit, then dried duck then cooked chicken then cooked chicken with bits of juice-jelly still on it). More recently, I’ve tried talking to her softly and stroking her tummy and giving her quality dog/master time to try to make her stay in her basket.

None of it has worked so every night, after she’s had her walk, I have had to go through the same tedious routine: put dog in dog room; be irritated that she hasn’t settled in her basket; make gap in the door just big enough for me to escape through but not so big that dog can slip past me thus giving dog confidence to be even more troublesome and bitey when I try to catch dog, etc.

Clearly, the problem is that she doesn’t like the room she’s in. In my more stoned moments, I have imagined that this is because she is psychic and has foreseen a future in which my household gets massacred and that her room is the room where she gets killed along with the rest of us. But where else to put her? Not the laundry room - we already tried that. Not the kitchen because that’s where the cat sleeps and what if she decided to eat the cat in the night?

Anyway, our routine for the last three weeks has been disrupted (in a nice way, obvs) by visits from my eldest boy, the Rat, and my baby granddaughter. The Rat keeps weird, unsociable hours and scuttles from room to room, leaving lights on, eating chocolate, etc so it has been impossible to shut all the rooms up as normal. During one of these evenings, when we tried putting the dog to bed in her room, she instead insisted on going in the kitchen and pointedly occupying the basket next to the cat’s. She gave me a look as if to say: “Please don’t try to take me out of here.”

Finally, I got the message. Last night, for the first time in months, the dog settled down for the night without fuss. She didn’t want to eat the cat. She wanted the cat’s company.

I’m telling you this story because it made me happy and I think it will make you happy too. One of our missions in these end-of-days times, I believe, is to enjoy the simple things and create joy wherever we can. That includes our pets. (Even if one day we may have to end up eating them…)