Just Jump!

I have this really smart dog. But sometimes, just like the rest of us, she lacks the necessary confidence to carry out a task.

Or maybe she isn't as smart as I think she is. She incessantly attacks the vacuum cleaner when it's on until I get so frustrated with her behavior I lock her outside with the kids. What's the point of that? If she could learn to leave the vacuum alone she wouldn't end up outside with the crazy people.

And it was only a few months ago, I saw her open a door for the very first time in ten years. I'm not talking about a locked door where she needed a key to gain entry. No. I'm talking about a door left ajar, with too small an opening for her to squek through. Up until she had the just push the ajar door open to gain entry epiphany, she used to stand there growling and barking for help in all her patheticness, until someone came to her rescue.

"Woof, woof, grrrrrrwl!" calls Nadia the Dog for help.

"Oh honey are you okay?" coos Stefan as he comes to her aid. He is a total sucker for her. When he's not looking, she sings this song to me. Specifically the part, "David Duchovny why won't you love me? I'm gonna kill Scully." Yes, that makes me Scully.


I call Nadia the Dog pathetic because compared to Nay Nay the Cat she is. Nay Nay the Cat, who is much smaller, can open a door with such force it's startling. Her door opening abilities frequently cause me to wonder, "who the heck just walked in my door? Phew, it's just Nay Nay the Cat."

On the other hand, Nadia the Dog is smart in a sneaky, caniving sort of way. She often talks us into feeding her second dinners by convincing the person who didn't feed her dinner that she hasn't had dinner yet. And she waits until the person who did feed her, leaves the room.

When I leave her in the car, she finds food I didn't even know was there and devours it leaving a mess of crumbs and fur as evidence to her misdeeds. Somehow she manages to hop from the very back to the snacks and back to the very back before I return to the car.

Even worse is when she gets my mochas, leaving behind an empty Starbucks cup and mocha drenched paw prints. Good thing for my handy dandy baby wipes. How she gets the lid off I will never know? I have a hard enough time doing this with my own hands, I can only imagine her challenge with paws and mouth. I have a feeling she is going to be in for a rude awakening when she realizes I have switched from mochas to Americanos. I can only hope she won't like Americanos.

Well, here is Nadia the dog stuck on a rock at the beach we have walked countless times. Eventually, she figured her own way down. And although I had to walk back to her royal stuckness and talk her down from the rock, at least I didn't have to carry her off the rock.

"Come on girlie, you can do it!" I say encouragingly. Funny thing is those are the exact words I need to hear when I'm stuck on a rock, not knowing if I should jump off into the wild unknown or head back for safety the way I came.