not.
so...
after i came home from lola's final journey, i picked up murphy to take back out to the cottage with me. i still had a day and a night left and thought murph would make perfect, no stress company.
wrong.
i had a lot of stuff to do..see the previous post for my list of things to be done. and it was pretty important that either murph be comfortable alone in the house or willing to hang around me while i did my things outside. but murph felt this was the perfect opportunity to indulge himself in his unknown to me...inquisitive, wandering style. he was as bad as benny was for buggering off to check out the neighborhood and i had to keep stopping what i was doing to call him back to my side. at one point he disappeared and i caught his ass end trotting off across the front yard...i called him back and the bugger just increased his pace and trotted behind a couple of big and bushy cedar trees across the road. either he was totally deaf or he was being an uncooperative ass and ignoring me. suddenly his old grizzled face cautiously peered around the side...i saw that dog's eyes widen in sudden "oh shit, busted" surprise to be caught making actual eye contact. hah..he knew he was caught red handed and so pretended to be a good boy and came as soon as i called.
oh you freaking bastard...murph was invoking the beagle's eye contact rule...no eye contact and i don't have to hear you!
murph is NOT a beagle and so should not be using that beagle rule.
and then there is gilligan..super nice dog...dumb as a post. everything outside of our fences and gates is utterly terrifying and fearful. this morning renee and i dragged him from the house, shoved him in the car to go to the clinic for his eye surgery. when i picked him up tonight..it took three of us to push, pull and drag him back to the car BECAUSE OMG-duh! he had a cone on his head. gilligan doesn't fight you and he doesn't have an aggressive or self protective bone in his body...he just freezes and cowers. "sorry, i am REALLY scared and i am NOT moving from here." try moving a one hundred pound frozen and terrified dog..it sucks in the extreme.
it makes me feel like shit, dragging the poor terrified big baby beast but it is not like i can actually leave him there!
anyway, i called erin on the way home to come help me because i just couldn't face dragging him around again all alone. he actually did not need dragging, he was relieved to be home but he still looks pretty damn sad and pathetic while sentenced to living with his head in a cone.
i do really love both of these dogs and they sometimes make me laugh when running away and being bad or sometimes they break my heart when i absolutely have to drag a big and terrified boy from point A to point B...but mostly amidst all that love and heartbreak, they do drive me somewhat crazy.