Busy Buddy
Our lives have been changed in the past two weeks, and as often the case with people who get new pets, it is almost all due to Buddy. In a nutshell, Buddy is a five-pound ball of energy, trying hard to run with the big dogs. He sleeps like a champ since he is still very much a puppy of only 14 months, but once he wakes up he is on the go. After Kim takes him on his morning constitutional walk around the garden, he gallops from one end of the house to the other, first looking for me to discover whatever it is that I’m up to, and then just to survey his domain. He knows he is in charge of the house now, so he figures he had better be aware of anything going on in any corner. When I say gallop, I do mean gallop. You know that sound effect you learned to do as a child where thou rhythmically slap your hands together and on your thighs, creating a galloping sound? Well, that’s exactly the sound that this little five-pound dog makes as he runs around the house.
Since he usually catches up with me on this first pass somewhere between the master bath and the master closet, he will, after greeting me with a few long upward stretches, intended to stretch the sleep out of his spine, spend a few minutes rolling around on the closet carpet. He have resurfaced most of the house in luxury vinyl flooring, which is a godsend whenever Buddy (or Betty before him) decides they can’t wait to go outside to relieve themselves. That means that the closet and its carpet are prime back-scratching space for Buddy. Buddy keeps several rawhide chicken chewies around the house at strategic locations. He is not particularly a ravenous dog when it come to food. Something in his toy poodle makeup has made him less anxious about food to fuel his little five-pound body. So, he is not particularly anxious about when breakfast will be served and he is content to chew on his rawhide for a while.
Unlike Betty or Cecil, Buddy very much likes his faux fur beds and uses them as home base from which to launch his sorties into other parts of the house. Right now he has several of these beds in the living room and even outside in the garage for when he accompanies Kim out for some errands or other out there. He almost certainly keeps one of his chewies in each bed just to have it handy when the mood arises for a good chew. Buddy is all about a good play fight. Kim and I are in the habit of spending some leisure time sitting across from one another in the living room in the morning. Kim has her coffee and I have my grumbling stomach to keep me company. Usually I use the time to dig deeper into some articles thrown at me. I also spend time in the morning doing exactly what I am doing right now, which is to write a story or two. But then Buddy usually has a better idea of what I should be doing and he will jump up on the sofa with a chewy in his mouth and decide he wants to play fight.
The game he seems to like the most is when I take away his chewy and place it just beyond his reach. He and I then have a big play fight where I keep him tantalizingly away from the chewy with my hand. I have learned that it is best to keep my hand in a fist since his razor-sharp little teeth can do a number on my fingers, but they don’t so much bother my clenched first. So I literally box with Buddy, who will stand on his hind legs and paw at me like a stallion and chew on my fist in a low growl. I have never been a fan of roughhousing with a dog, thinking that it encourages bad behavior, but it is clear that Buddy desperately needs to play fight as often as he can. I suspect it is a combination of excess energy and his little dog complex combined with his primordial hunter skillset.
Buddy is a poodle and not a terrier, so its not like he is bred to root out vermin the way a terrier might be. But nonetheless, watching Buddy play with his ragamuffin raccoon, it is clear that grabbing and shaking to death some sort of member of the rodent family is well inside his primordial heritage. I like to wrestle Buddy backward on his hind legs and flip him over onto a pillow. When that happens and if I get to his soft underbelly just right, he gets transfixed by the belly rub and just lies back to relish the scratching. It seems like he then suddenly remembers that he has a job to do defending the castle and he spins up to his little feet, looks around menacingly and attentively, and races off, sometimes forgetting that he has left his chewy on the sofa. When he gets back to his bed, the absence of a handy chewy suddenly hits him and he bolts back to the sofa to retrieve his prize. When he snatches out from under my looming hand, he seems to get a sense of triumph and then prances back to his bed like the conquering hero he is in his own mind.
Kim takes Buddy on several walks each day and I play like this with him in between, but Buddy has more energy than that can dispel. Yesterday, our friends Sam and Chris came over for a visit. They have a little dog called Cali, who always seemed to me to be a very small, sweet house dog. When I saw Cali on the leash at the front door, I realized that she is actually not so small, especially compared to Buddy. I’m guessing she is twice his size. With both Cali and Buddy on a leash, they were a somewhat cautious and prickly pair that barked and avoided one another. Finally, we had them touch noses and then let them each off-leash. They both proceeded to do that dance of back and forth testing with a nip here and a sniff there. Cali is also a young dog, perhaps 10 months older than Buddy, but still young enough to have lots of excess energy and playful instinct. For the next hour or so, the two of them went at each other with gusto. By the end of the hour, almost every toy in Buddy’s toy basket was out and strewn about, as were all of Buddy’s stash of chewies.
The good news was that Buddy was not terribly proprietary about his toys or chewies and seemed willing to throw them into the mix as part of the good play acting. He and Cali romped around with great pleasure until they had worn each other out. As Sam, Chris and Cali departed, Buddy headed straight to his bed, too pooped to even chew his chewy. He napped for a half hour and got ready for his next round of play fighting. It is clear that Buddy has an agenda since he rarely tires of play fighting and is up for a game of battle the hand almost any time I suggest it and many times when I am otherwise engaged.
Our lives have become a matter of keeping Buddy busy, and we are just enjoying the hell out of it.