the tale of the dog that licked you

I have been remiss. In my all too frequent absence from this blog of late, I neglected to mention that we got a new dog. We were not intending to do this quite as quickly as it happened, but the eldest’s boss, upon hearing of our loss, asked if we would be interested in taking one of their dogs (personality conflict between dogs forcing them to get rid of her). So, we began the sudden adjustment that comes from severe downsizing, and made room on our laps for Daisy the Dachshund.

Daisy thinks she is a big dog. She is very loving and wonderful with the children and parents, but she is extremely protective. A ringing doorbell or knock at the door will immediately set her off on a frenzied rush of barks and growls as she runs back and forth from door to resident, “Intruder alert! Intruder alert!”

The husband has enjoyed this trait since discovering that doorbell rings on the television produce the same result (or telephone rings, elevator dings, game show buzzers…). He is now able to combine his two favorite pastimes – playing with the DVR remote, and teasing mercilessly (all in good fun, of course).

We have construction going on in an upstairs room of our house right now. Normally, we would be handling this by ourselves, but we threw caution to the wind, and actually hired someone to do the drywall this time around. The constant opening and closing of the front door combined with the speed of a certain weiner dog led to the necessity of leashing Daisy during certain times of the day. At one such time, S, the instigator, sick of holding onto the leash, attached it instead to the piano chair. Now, I call this the piano chair, but in reality, it is your standard wheeled office chair which just happens to reside at the table upon which the keyboard rests.

I was on the phone with my mother. It was turning into a relatively long conversation since, after several days of laryngitis, I finally had most of my voice back (and I haven’t been over to see her in an entire week), so I did not immediately notice the leash situation. When I did, I set off to locate the responsible party. Before I could make my way to the other room, happenstance interfered.

It is a dark secret of our “little” family that the TV is a member of the household. Often, even when no one is actually watching the thing, it is left in operation. After all, we wouldn’t want it to get lonely or bored. Apparently, the television would very much like to be the dear husband when it grows up, for it chose that moment to peal out with the ring of a doorbell.

Dachshunds are not very big dogs.

Suddenly, the piano chair went flying through the living room, hot on the trail of a barking tornado – through the obstacle course of a living room recently abandoned by young children at play, on to the dining room.

We live in a 100 year old house. I don’t know if you have spent much time in old houses, but it is a somewhat common anomaly for such houses to have floors which are less than level. In short, our dining room works well for science classes studying the effects of gravity.

The chair started catching up with the dog.

Being a person of gentle heart, I should feel guilty that I didn’t help the poor thing sooner, but I must admit that I was simply laughing too darn hard. My greatest regret? I didn’t have a video camera handy, so I won’t get to use that wonderful phrase, “No animals were harmed in the making of this film.”