Winter is fading at long last, my son’s first winter in his “new” house — a hundred-year-old gem with all the charm (and harm) that a century can bring. And although Dave loves the previous owner’s bathroom renovation, he learned during the recent cold spell that there was nothing charming about the poorly insulated water pipes in the uninsulated crawl space.
And so, without water for several days until he could find a plumber willing to wade through frozen crawlspace water to fix the cracked pipes, he resigned himself to limiting his bathroom activities to the gym or his place of employment for a while. But it wouldn’t be all that bad, he told himself, because he lives alone — well, alone except for his Brittany spaniel puppy Cinder, whose bathroom activities in the yard would go unchanged.
But Brits are intelligent, and when young they are also mischievous. And so my son’s winter woes were about to get a lot worse.
Somehow, Cinder figured out how to open cabinets. And the first day after discovering his new talent, he found an unopened sack of flour that looked like a lot of fun. Dave came home from work that day to find the floor and carpets dusted in white, with white footprints all over the new sofa. Flour, he learned, is almost impossible to sweep or vacuum up, and without running water to wet a mop, he did the best he could do.
He resolved to pick up some child-proof cabinet latches on his way home from work the next day.
When Dave returned home that day, he found that a box of macaroni and cheese was Cinder’s new toy on the sofa. And to make matters worse, after dusting cheese powder all over the cushions, Cinder thought it might be tasty, and so he licked up as much of it as he could—about half of the packet. The other half of the cheesy dust turned into a bright orange saliva glaze embedded deep into the fabric of the cushions.
At long last, though, with a plumber secured and water restored, with cabinets dog-proofed (at least for now, until Cinder cracks the code) the house is back to some sense of normalcy. Lessons learned.
As Dave related his woes to me over the phone, I learned how hard it is to sound sympathetic as tears of laughter leak down your cheeks, no matter how much you love your son.
And I feel partly to blame, because I put the love of Brittany Spaniels into his heart. Just months after Dave was born, I got a Brittany pup named Dandy. They grew up together and were best friends, all the way into high school (Dave’s school, that is.)
And if he had asked me before he got his Brit, I could have told him a tale or two.
Like the time on my birthday when my wife baked my favorite German chocolate cake, then scolded me not to touch it as it cooled on the counter. And so, fearing reprisals, I left it alone, only checking on it once in a while with a finger to make sure that the frosting on the back of the cake was properly applied.
And then, just before supper, I noticed that the cake had been surgically cut in half.
“Hey,” I called to my wife, “why did you cut the cake in half? Are you freezing some of it?”
“What are you talking about?” she called. I heard her footsteps echoing down the hallway. Once in the kitchen, she scowled at me. “I told you not to touch that cake,” she said.
“I didn’t touch it. Well, at least I didn’t cut it in half.”
“Well, if you didn’t, then who did? That cake didn’t cut itself.”
We turned to see Dandy’s head peeking around the doorframe from the dining room. She skulked away when she saw that she was the center of our attention.
Now, Dandy was a good dog who knew her boundaries. She was welcome to walk on our wood floors or the kids’ rooms, but not the carpeted master bedroom. As we ate in the kitchen, she lay in the other room, nothing but her paws on the threshold. If a scrap of food fell off the table, she obeyed the “ten second rule,” giving us a chance to retrieve it if we wanted to. If not, after ten seconds, she would steal slowly into the kitchen, pick up the scrap, then go back out of the room to eat it where she lay.
But it turns out that even obedient dogs have their limits, and for Dandy the limit was German chocolate cake. With nobody watching, she stole into the kitchen, stood with her front paws on the edge of the counter, then nibbled as far as she could reach, which turned out to include exactly the front half of the cake.
I’m pretty sure Dave already knew my mischievous Brit tale of woe, so I’m not feeling too guilty about hearing of Cinder’s antics. A missing cake — or a cheese-frosted sofa — is a small price to pay for a pup as lovable as our Brits. And I’m sure Dave will have other darned-dog tales to tell before it’s all over.
I’ll keep you posted. Stay tuned.
Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
