We survived the first night with our granddogs.
Our son and daughter-in-law took a babymoon to Washington, D.C. In case you don’t know what a babymoon is (I didn’t), it’s supposed to be a relaxing trip that couples take before their baby is born. You know, because come May, their lives will never be their own again.
We’ve kept the granddogs for a weekend before, but this time it’s 4 1/2 days. Tilley is a sweet, submissive beagle, and Zorro is a part-Chihuahua, part-Pomeranian (we think) rescue dog who is sweet until something sets him off every few months. I seem to be that trigger.
They also have a cat, Mia, but she’s a cat, so she’s self-sufficient and low-maintenance. They leave her at home with a big bowl of food and the bathtub faucet dripping, and she’s happy.
We have a 21-pound house cat, Ashton, and a little dog, Rudy, who lives outside and sleeps in his kennel inside at night.
The mixture of the menagerie is a little bit crazy.
Right now, the dogs are my son and DIL’s babies, and they worry about them as all good parents do. My son called to talk to me about the particulars of keeping the dogs.
He asked when I would let the dogs out and suggested that early morning was a little too cold for Zorro
to stay outside. Tilley has a history of trying to dig out, so he said I needed to let her stay in her own backyard, which is dog-proofed, during the day.
Zorro has discovered our cat door that leads into the garage. That’s fine — unless the garage door is up. My son asked what we were going to do with Zorro if we needed to leave, since Zorro knows about the cat door. Tilley also knows about it because she stuck her big head through the door and broke it during the last visit, but my husband repaired it.
I assured my son that if I left, I’d have David hold Zorro; if David left, I’d hold Zorro. If we both left, I said, we’d throw a treat in the back of the house and run, or maybe close Zorro in a room just for a short time.
Zorro has escaped from our house before, and my husband ran through the neighborhood in his robe and house shoes to capture him. To be fair, Zorro has escaped from his own home and sent my son on a chase, too.
“We will take care of them; don’t worry,” I told him.
To prepare for my granddogs, I covered the couch and one chair with towels to protect the furniture from the ubiquitous dog hair.
I went to my son and DIL’s house and picked up the dogs. They happily came in and ran circles in the living room, jumped on every piece of furniture. Ashton hissed every time they got near him.
When my husband was about to come home from work, he called me, and I put Zorro in our backyard so there was no chance of him running through the cat door and escaping.
After an initial whirl of wrestling on the couch, behind my back and next to David as he tried to work on his laptop, the dogs settled down. Ashton was not happy that Tilley took over the couch, but he settled on an ottoman nearby, staring at the interloper. Zorro cuddled up to David as he worked.
When we went to bed, we showed Ashton that his food was up on the washing machine, safe from Tilley. I gave Zorro his twice-daily medication and put him in his kennel.
About 3 a.m., I heard Ashton pawing at our door. I knew immediately what had happened. He couldn’t find his food. I stalled, and David finally got up. He told me that when he got to the laundry room in the dark, Ashton disappeared, so my husband had to go look for him through the house and carry him back to the washing machine for his food.
David let Tilley out to go to the bathroom at that time, and she wouldn’t come back in the house. He had to go in our backyard in the dark, find her and carry her inside.
At 6 a.m., Ashton was back at our bedroom door, but it was past time for me to get up. He wanted lifted onto the washing machine to eat.
“This is stupid; I’m not doing this again,” I said. That cat is perfectly capable of jumping up that high; we’ve seen him do it.
We took Tilley back to her house in the morning to hang out in the backyard for the day. I’ll pick her up after work, and we’ll start the whole process over.
I hope we pass the test taking care of the dogs so our son and DIL will let us keep our grandchild.
Compared to this, a baby will be a breeze.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.