My friend Linda jokes that when you have dogs, you never pee alone. That’s pretty much true around here, so I’ve taken to asking for a variety of behaviors. If Lilly is going to follow me into the bathroom, she might as well entertain me.
It started with down-stays while I take a shower or brush my teeth. It doesn’t always work, but often Lilly hangs out on the bath mat until I’m done.
After one particularly tough battle 2 years ago, over a wintertime bath, I started asking her to hop in and out of the tub. She does it often enough that I don’t even have to cue it. She just jumps in and waits for an OK to leave.
I figured that Lilly tied the behavior to my presence … until last week.
Lilly often hides in the house if something freaks her out. It could be Tom dropping something in the garage. It could be me banging a copper pot in the kitchen while I cook. It could be Tom’s fire dept pager going off. Hiding, for Lilly, is most often associated with scary noises.
The first time we saw it was around the holidays in 2004. Apparently, all the other times I’d used the vacuum, Lilly had been outside. But one morning, before guests arrived, I made one quick pass through the house, which caused Lilly to spend many, many hours under our bed.
We’ve worked on it so that now she’ll leave the room when I vacuum, but she doesn’t cower underneath anything anymore.
Well, I’m not sure what set her off last week, but I couldn’t find her. I knew she was in the house, but I hadn’t seen her in a while … even as I made my way through the house watering plants.
I popped into the hall bath to refill my watering can, and this is what I found:
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