It's difficult to sit at my desk these days.
Barkley has decided this is his particular playground. I cleaned this all up yesterday and moved the toys out to the family room. When I came in to my office this morning, this is what I saw.
It gets a little more difficult to actually sit here. That is when the floor looks like this:
Barkley must be on my body at all times and is never happier than when I am sitting down at my desk, when he can curl up on top of my feet. When he's not chewing up a toy or some paper he found, that is. He is so intent on bringing everything in here to my office that he even carries a dog bed in here. And, since he is very much in love with this bad, there is a lot of self-gratification going on under my desk as well.
I haven't written a DOG entry in a long time. We've had several fosters come and go, but Barkley and Fozzy Bear have been here long enough to start to worm their way into my heart and make me want to talk about them.
Barkley has let it be known, in no uncertain terms, that he is the alpha dog around here. Sheila and Lizzie just sigh and leave him to his delusions. They know he will be gone eventually. When he first came, I put him in the cage to sleep because he was such a hyper dog, but he has calmed down considerably and now sleeps either in my lap in the recliner, or on the couch with me.
He is permanently attached to me. I am his goddess and he must be with me at all times, attached to my skin, if at all possible. But he's got this cute little face and his eyes are always so bright, especially when he's hoping I'll throw a toy for him.
Fozzy Bear is adorable but was much more restrained when he first came here. He obviously wanted affection, but was leery about it as well. When the others were all climbing all over me, Fozzy would hold back. But he's become much more comfortable here and now participates in the love-in as much as the rest of them do. (It's also easier in this heat now that both dogs know how to use the dog door.)
We now have four watch dogs instead of two. Barkley started joining in the fray when the others barked right away, and now Fozzy does too. Char came to pick me up the other day and stood outside the door laughing while we tried to corral the dogs before we could open it up. (When my friend Lisa came the other day, she called first, so I managed to get all four dogs outside before she arrived!)
However, the foster dogs are now getting so comfortable here that they are getting into trouble. This morning, Walt glanced into the living room and found that somebody is digging a hole in the middle of the living room rug.
Ordinarly this would be a huge tragedy and I would be feeling very guilty about not supervising the dogs better, but since the plan is to replace the rug with Pergo (hopefully before Christmas, since we are supposed to host the cousins Christmas party this year), perhaps they have done us a big favor by making this huge mess in the floor.
Time to stop waiting for Ned's sister-in-law to come and pick up the piano and give it to the first person who claims it and then start moving things out of the living room and go shopping for Pergo. I have great hope that replacing the rug will stop the digging and the peeing in the living room and maybe we can go back to having a "real" living room again, one that doesn't smell like 3 years worth of dog pee.
(When I set this photo up, I overlooked one other
bottle of "Urine Odor Cover-Up" stuff.)
The dogs will go to Petco again tomorrow and they are so darn cute, I just can't believe at least one of them won't be adopted. But it's always nice when they stay here long enough that I start to want to take pictures to remember them after they have moved on to their forever homes.
Piano update ... I finally put an ad on Craig's list, had someone contact me within 30 minutes. Ten minutes later he had a moving truck and within 3 hours of my placing the ad, the piano was GONE.
(An hour after I made the arrangements for him to come and pick up the truck, Ned's mother-in-law called to say they found a piano mover and would pick the piano up on Monday. I had to tell her that, after two years, it was finally too late. But she found another piano the same day, so after waiting for her for two years, she ends up getting another piano the day I find a taker for mine! Grrr!)
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