I know a lot of people roll their eyes and say my dog is ‘just a dog’. I guess they are entitled to their opinions, I just hope they are not dog owners (poor wee beasties!).
Dogs have been a part of my life, well, for most of my life, from Lady, the cute as a button spaniel when I was about 5 (who gave her life saving mine by the way but that is a whole other story!), through the wonder dog Rusty, Potlicker, Cheyenne, Lucy, Baxter and now Miss Frieda, the diva-dog.
And she is a diva, no doubt in that, with her haughty expression if you dare put down dinner without at least 2 cookies on top (or 4 carrot slices!) to her habit of stealing crocs when she thinks it is time for another cookie and a snuggle (usually perched on top of the couch back).
Let’s just say that life with Miss Frieda is an adventure, she of the loudest bark you have ever heard! But there is another side to Frieda that most probably never see.
Frieda is reactive and highly protective, quite likely the Walker – Aussie Shepherd genes kicking in. When she is outside playing with me she rarely barks, me being accepted as her alpha. When my wife or son are outside she is constantly pacing between them and the fence, barking from time to time to keep other interlopers well at bay.
This past week was a ‘nut-buster from Hell’ pardon the expression. Work was a zoo, with a lot of snarky clients adding to the zooming pace of post-Xmas updates. It seemed like a low priority issue from the week before suddenly warranted a phone call to senior management, usually at about 130db. And we know what happens to merde when it gets to the top of the hill!
Add to that I have been fighting a nasty cold since Xmas, eerily similar to the Covid that put me on the shelf for 2 months a couple years back. I never tested, more afraid it would be Covid again than anything, just went about blasting the tea and lemon and heavy doses of Vitamin D3. All week it got worse. Now you have to realize that in an 8 hour day of work I will probably spend 5-6 hours in a Teams call, which is just lovely when it feels like you have a throat full of razor blades.
As I slowly descended into the grip of whatever this plague was an interesting thing happened…
Normally, when it is just she and I in the house (I work from home thankfully!), Miss Frieda will check in on me every couple of hours then trot back to the couch for a snooze. Not this week! As each day went on she would check on me more and more often and linger much longer on each tour. By Thursday morning she had given up on the couch and snoozed on the floor behind my office chair!
By Friday at 6am my throat was basically shut, my chest was on fire, with a massive headache and sore back thrown in for good measure. My wife gave me that side-eye look as she headed to work, so I dutifully called in sick.
Freed from my office chair for the day I relaxed and snoozed on the couch through a variety of PlutoTV movies (yes, Heather it was the Romance 365 channel – they have great soundtracks to snooze by!). And Miss Frieda became Miss Frieda RDN (Registered Dog Nurse) – never more than 3 feet from me, giving me reminder barks whenever I closed a door (loo) between us and coming 3 inches from my face as I rested to give me a health check sniff, then flopping on the floor directly in front of the couch!
This morning I woke up amazingly better than when I went to sleep. Not great, not 100% recovered, but at least someone dulled all the razor blades while I slept.
Miss Frieda is back to her usual diva-dog, barking when the cookies are a bit slow coming, stealing crocs and generally back in adventure mode. But I see her giving me side-eye every so often, just in case she has to jump into Florence Nightingale mode again!
I know a lot of people roll their eyes and say my dog is ‘just a dog’. Too bad, you are missing the joy of a fur-person who just ‘knows’ and makes you her world.
Peace,
Mark
(fwiw… I wrote this post in OsoWrites… It rocks!)