DogGeekery

A warning. This is only remotely fiber related, but I feel I must share something with you all.

Today has not been a great day so far. We are in the middle of getting the house ready for a party on Saturday night, so things are getting cleaned that have not been clean in YEARS. This is silly, I admit. No one coming to the party cares. They like us for the way we are and not the way we should be.

So, this morning, my Sweetie removed some construction stuff from our back porch that has been there since 2002. I felt he would appreciate some help and I was worried about him injuing his back with the heavy stuff. So, I went out to help him.

We uncovered many treasures. One of them was a dirty laundry basket that had stuff in it that all went to the garbage. I thought I could use this basket for another purpose, and it was dirty. I brought it in and left it in the utility rooom sink filling with soapy water. I promptly forgot this so the water kept running. I was preoccupied with helping. My mistake.

So, when I discovered the sink had run over and spread water all over this end of the house (here is the fiber part) and into the knitting room running under the Pergo floor, I was not happy. I admited my mistake quickly, and my Sweetie ran for the shop vac and started vacuuming water up.

He was not too happy with me for being a dummy and forgetting the water. I wasn't too happy with me either. We cleaned water for a while and then he said some of our dogs had run outside when he came in. Then he realized he forgot the gate was open as he was using the tractor to take out the trash from the porch to the front of the house.

Kharma has a way of getting even doesn't it? He realized that he forgets things too and that took some of the heat of of me for being an idiot.

So, things went from bad to worse in a hurry. We dropped the vacuum and left the wet floor and went outside, praying our dogs had not gone far.

Now, if you have dogs, here is the part where you need to pay attention. Our dogs are all chow hounds and our yard is large. They can be selectively deaf to their names. but from the time they are little, we liberally give them cookies or treats every time they come to us when they are called. When they are babies, we always have cookies in our pockets, and even as adults, when we call them from the yard, they most often get a treat for coming to their names. They know coming to us will NEVER get them in trouble. If we need to scold them, which is very rare, we go to them. We don't ask them to come to be punished.

So, we live at the end of a dead end street. The dogs had been out at least 15 minutes. They are whippets and could have been far away.

We went into the yard, called their names and said the magic word "Cookie". They were all across the street which at our house means they were over the length of a football field away.

All of them came running like they were catching a rabbit. I am so, so grate full. I can not even imagine how much worse the day would have been if one of them was lost. Of course, they all got lots of treats.

So, I encourage you, if you have dogs, to always give your dog a treat for coming to his name. We call it "pay to play". You never know when it might come in very handy. We are drying things out and hoping the floor can make it through one flood. I hope I don't ever do that again.

Next time, I will try to get things back to fiber, but today this is DogGeekery.