I can’t recall a time when we’ve been in our house without Annie. The last few days have been enlightening for us. We used to think we had Annie pretty well trained, but now we see it was us who was trained.

We first noticed it when Andrew started intentionally hitting the lamp pull-chain ball against the lamp rod. The other three of us (who live here) immediately urged Andrew to stop before Annie went crazy barking. Then we realized she wasn’t there to bark and there really wasn’t any reason not to do this. Then Cathy got the tin foil out and braced herself for the explosion of canine insanity as Annie lunged at the foil. And then she realized that wouldn’t happen either. I bumped into the dishwasher, causing the latch to snap shut, and I prepared for Annie’s kitchen patrol to come shake me down for the infraction. That didn’t happen either.

And we have begun to see how miserably trapped we are in our own home. We can now run the vacuum cleaner, open the back blinds in the afternoon and let the sun reflections in, get CD’s out of their case, use tinfoil, put away reflective pot lids, close the dishwasher, turn the lamps on and off and use flashlights in the house - all without getting barked at for five minutes.

Those are just the things we’ve realized in the last two days. Who knows what the next few days will reveal?

In this case, parting has not been sweet sorrow at all, only sweet.

Thank you for watching her, Kelloggs!

  Category: Annie the dog