The Mop. The Sneeze. The Storm. The Perils of A Dog’s Life.

Steve and I were out of town a few days this week and his parents graciously drove the six hours from Charlotte  to babysit our daughters–both human and canine.  It was an extra meaningful visit because it would be the first time they would get to meet Summer.  They had both dearly loved Snowy during his 13 years in our lives and I was so hoping that Summer would warm up to them quickly.

It’s a good thing Summer didn’t know ahead of time the terrible perils that would come her way in the days surrounding the visit.

For example:

In preparation for Ken and Vernie’s arrival,  I asked Sarah to mop the kitchen floor.  She moved all the chairs out to the hall and got out the bucket and the big tall mop and started swishing the mop across the floor.  It didn’t take her long to realize that Summer (who was lying in her kennel in the corner of the kitchen) was watching Sarah and her accompanying mop with trepidation and horror. 

WHAT was this tall, stick monster doing that was moving through the kitchen? WHY was it swishing back and forth in such a frightening, sinister pattern? WHEN would it arrive at her kennel and spirit her away to the Kingdom of Mop Monsterdom?

Summer fearfully watched Sarah (and The Mop’s) progress for as long as she could stand it, and then heroically gathered up her flagging doggy courage and sprinted out of her kennel, past the evil mop, and up the stairs where she took refuge in the corner of our master bedroom where we keep a second little bed for her.

She was emotionally fragile for the rest of the day as she tried desperately to get over the crisis she had just (barely) survived— the infamous Horrible Hideous Mop Crisis

But alas. There were more perils to come.

The next day, the grandparents arrived. Summer gave them a wide berth for quite a while since she is more of an introverted dog than Snowy was and isn’t as good around new people.

Here is Snowy in fine extroverted form saying, “Hello ma’am! May I interest you in a set of encyclopedias?”

Snowy never met a stranger.

 Ken and Vernie were very patient as they waited for Summer to warm up to them. They fed her a few little Cheerios and that melted the ice quite a bit. A couple of dog treats followed, and that won them a few more points. Finally at a particular point during their first evening here, Ken managed to get Summer to sit in the recliner with him.

Success!

Everything was going along rather swimmingly with grandpa and granddog bonding fabulously until suddenly and unexpectedly . . . .tragedy struck.

Ken sneezed. 

And since gentlemen of a certain age tend to be rather enthusiastic and exuberant in their sneezing, Summer was exposed close up to the full effects of a loud and most alarming noise.  As a result, she was up and gone from the chair in a flash and spent the next few hours slinking around and watching Ken carefully out the corner of the eye.  It was quite evident she had firmly placed him into the same horrid, horrendous, perilous category as The Evil Mop.  

It was clear that she believed she was living in a household fraught with terrors and perils of many kinds.  I mean, what could possibly be more traumatizing for any living creature than a mop and a sneeze?

When Steve and I left for our trip the next day, we were hoping against hope that Summer would forgive and forget The Sneeze Incident and gradually work up her courage to sit near grandpa again.   Vernie told us later that as the day wore on, things improved but Summer still wasn’t quite to the point where she was willing to sit with him.

However, that all changed later that night.  

We had been told by Summer’s former owners that she is terrified of storms and as it turns out, at about 10 pm, a humdinger hit.  Lighting.  Rain. Crashes of thunder.  

Ken was in our home office looking for a book to read when he happened to see Summer cowering under the desk, shivering and shaking.  

The look on her face made her thoughts quite obvious. First the Mop. Then the Sneeze. Then the Storm. What was life coming to?

Well, Ken is nothing if not a compassionate guy and he figured Summer might be ready to put the Sneezing Incident behind her and allow him pick her up.  He settled into the recliner with her cuddled against his chest and the two of them rode out the storm together.

All was forgiven.  All was forgotten.

Summer decided that she liked her new grandpa pretty well after all, and that she liked her new grandma, too. In fact, when we pulled back into our driveway late Tuesday afternoon, this is the sight that greeted us. 

All the perils of the previous days–the mop, the sneeze, the storm–were forgotten as Summer busied herself in the training of her new grandparents, making sure they were fully cognizant of all the many ways that they were allowed to spoil her.

And our next Summer Family Adventure?  It will be when Nathan and Meagan come home for Christmas and meet her for the first time.

I think everything should go very well–as long as I remind Nathan NOT to sneeze.