In praise of border collies

[conradd]

This made me smile.

Our Collie is not on a farm; stuck in suburbia she does not get to round-up much of anything, although we do see the occasional bunny. She is unstintingly loyal, fiercely protective, a little food-obsessed. Too much like me. When she was a pup, we installed a pool; she fell into it, panicked and since then she has a deep distrust of the body of water in the backyard. When I do laps, she must be taken into the house, otherwise she runs around the pool, non-stop, and continuously barking - she works her poor self into a frenzy. I believe she sees all that splashing and worries that I am drowning. As soon as I stop swimming, she is calm again. She is, even in her dotage, adorable and sweet; she uses words like “mom” and “mine”, and I love her.

and

Hearing me remove one from the crinkly cellophane bag, the dog came prancing over, and then followed me to my desk. “You’re gonna share, that, right?” she asked.

My husband has a bad habit of sharing his morning bagel with the dog. Now she thinks anything you are eating is actually meant for her.

“Go away,” I said. “you had breakfast, this is mine.”

She sat erect and tilted her head, looking none too pleased. Her head tipped forward and she followed my every move as I dunked my cookie into the coffee and bit. Narrowing her eyes, she leaned forward, obviously pissed.

“Mine.” She said, softly.

“Get lost,” I repeated. “My cookie; my breakfast. Everything is not always for you.”

She put her snout under my arm and flipped. Globby bits of coffee-saturated cookie flew all over the office, and was I happy? No.

Unamused, I gave her the rest of the cookie and sponged up the mess. I started working (blogging will be slow as I’m doing somethingforpay which is necessary, and thank God for the gig) and realized I still wanted my biscuit, so I went back into the kitchen and the Border Collie followed me, dropping a prodigious amount of new hairballs onto on my just-vacuumed floor. “Why do I have a dog,” I muttered.

“You ascared at night,” she muttered back. “You need me more than I need you.”

“Oh, really, and who feeds your greedy little mouth every morning and night,” I countered.

“Who barks at the UPS guy and anyone else that comes to the door, and threatens to rip their arms off, for you?”

“T’agh!” I said impatiently, “anyone could come to this door and if he was smart enough to bring you a pizza, he could walk out with the whole house.”

“T’agh!” she said back, “as if you had anything worth stealing. I class this place up!”

Gad, I hate other women. So catty.

[jgibson2[$]]

Great!

My Aussie would agree with her dog. Right down to the hairballs on the carpet