Our little dog Chance is a creature of habit. He is also blessed with a robust internal clock, so that all his days, as far as he can manage them, unfold right on schedule. From the moment he wakes up, to climb sleepily into my lap where he will snooze for another hour and a half while I drink coffee and read the news, (the only time of day he even considers snuggling in the recliner with me) until he successfully wrangles me onto the couch in the evening so he can press first his head, and eventually his entire length, up against my leg and, you guessed it, sleep, each day’s events unfold in the most predictable, most delightful (from his point of view), manner.

At the same time, he can be very adaptable if he so chooses. Nimble in fact. If one day I randomly hand him a dog biscuit as we are coming in from the barnyard, he adds this exciting event to his list, and the next time we come in from the barnyard, he beelines to the closet door behind which the dog biscuits live, where he stands eyeing me with a confident air, genially wagging his tail. If I keep walking, turn the corner and head up the stairs, he quickly deflates, his body language screaming his disappointment, and trails glumly after me up the stairs. He will keep asking for days, if not weeks, every time we come in from the barnyard in the afternoon, before he’ll sadly strike “receive dog biscuit after barnyard” from his schedule. Lord help me if I give him that après barnyard treat more than once in a month! He almost needs counselling to finally let go.

The daily schedule around which Chance’s life orbits consists mostly of events involving food, although specific types of snuggle time on specific pieces of furniture with specific people are right up there too. As is going outside at specific times (ostensibly to relieve himself, but really to yell at anyone, man or beast, daring to use the road in front of our house), play time with Arrow, feeding the horses in the evening, and to cap each day, his chew chew (rubber bone stuffed with tiny treats).

I admit I do indulge him, and yes he is a manipulator. I am quite aware and I do allow this; I take reciprocal pleasure in making my dog happy. Chance’s schedule harmlessly choreographs our days, and has for years. I know that his schedule makes my little rescue dog feel secure, but sometimes his fervent adherence to it still surprises me. 

Each day after early morning barnyard (for me, he stays behind snuggling in bed with DH) he and I go into my office where I nudge my computer awake and grab him his daily half a dentabone. I throw it, he grabs it excitedly, and I “change my mind”, chasing him down the hallway and into the living room, growling that I want it back. He dearly loves being chased, he cavorts and practically giggles as he goes. Then I laugh and give up, he plops down and begins to devour his treat. I retreat to my office, shut the door, and start to check my email. After a few minutes, his single soft ‘scritch’ at the door signals that he’s ready for breakfast, which I serve in the kitchen, then back to my desk. Another ‘skritch’ a few minutes later tells me he is ready to go outside. Generally his barking gets him brought inside again, usually by DH, and eventually another soft ‘skritch’ tells me he is ready to take up his position on his six inch foam bed under my work table, where he snores away the remainder of the morning while I conduct my business of the day.

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The other morning, I had a deadline and was already working when he got up from DH snuggle time and skritched at my door for his dentabone. Knowing that he would just sit there, softly skritching every few minutes, until I gave him what he was “owed”, I grabbed half a dentabone, opened the door, and dropped it at his feet, then closed the door, sat back down, and got back into my task. Until. Skritch. A minute or two. Then, skritch. “Oh jeez.” I thought, “He’s got to be kidding, it’s not enough to get the treat, he wants me to chase him too?” Realizing that the quickest route to peace was to indulge him, I got up again and opened the door, whereupon he grinned up at me, picked up his half dentabone in his mouth and tossed it high in the air over his shoulder into the hallway, pivoted, pounced on it, took possession, and ran down the hallway giggling, with me in hot pursuit. 

“Excellent” I could practically hear him thinking as he plopped down to chew, “that’s done properly now, and rightly so.”

Chance cruises through most days on the edge of sleep, until something piques his interest. Nothing grabs his attention better than a baby. Any baby. We’re talking zero to a hundred in a nano-second.

It came as a surprise, Chance’s baby obsession. Because for the first couple years of life with Chance, there were no babies around. 

Wow, he is sure a dog’s dog, we decided. Chance focuses intensely on other dogs, especially puppies. We had in the past always kept dogs two at a time, starting fresh after each pair crossed the rainbow bridge. But after Chance arrived we put off getting a second dog. If Chance got his own puppy, he might never speak to us again. Not intentionally, he simply wouldn’t see us.

And then a couple years ago, with our younger generation into their twenties, we started seeing the occasional baby over for a visit. It has been delightful to play with babies again, and no one has loved their visits more than Chance.

 

Our dear K recently flew in for a visit with her…you guessed it…six month-old BABY! Oh boy Chance! A real BABY!

She didn’t just stay for an hour either, this baby stayed for days. Chance was in heaven. He constantly attended his baby F, observing diaper changes, supervising feeding sessions and willingly accepting (and licking industriously) grabby little hands.  He had to be checked again and again as his enthusiasm exceeded the situation and threatened to overwhelm our little bright eyed little girlie with his doggie love.

 

Luckily baby has three doggos of her own at home. She handled the canine onslaught beautifully. So did her momma, correcting Chance calmly, appropriately and patiently.

When baby cried, as all babies do from time to time, Chance would become frantic. His relief was likewise greater than any of the rest of ours, each time baby settled down. When baby went into her bedroom and the door shut, Chance stayed on guard until she came out again. Every morning as soon as he got up, he ran down the hall to station himself outside her door.

 

When her visit ended and baby F left for home, Chance slept for two days straight.

Babies are tiring eh Chance! You just wait a couple years till she is running around the house after you to dress you up for an afternoon tea party.

We were jolted away from our various pursuits yesterday afternoon by an ungodly screaming coming from the barnyard. It sounded as though one of the dogs had been kicked by an angry donkey, or hit by a car, or attacked by a cougar or bear!

I was working in my office, so ran to a west-facing window to see what was going on. B was puttering around the house, he headed for the back deck. K was closest, re-fortifying a veggie patch fence against chicken depredations. Reaching the scene first, she found a terrified little dog, shaking like a leaf behind the barn.

Putting two and two together, and in the complete absence of killer cars, equines, cougars or bears, she surmised that poor Chance must have become tangled in the electric fence gate, which hung loosely at the corner of the barn. Ouch, that would have been a shock.

Relieved that no lasting damage appeared to have been done, we returned to our various tasks. Chance stayed out with K, refusing to venture more than three feet from her side the rest of the afternoon. After supper, he glued himself to me all evening, even choosing to follow me to bed (his kennel is just outside our room) rather than than stay up late, like he usually does, with B.

This morning, and in the general excitement, he forgot his fear long enough to make it out the back door with Liza and me, but out in the barnyard, when I looked for him a little while later, he was nowhere in sight. He had retreated to the carport, where he cowered, waiting for another bolt out of the blue.

Later in the morning, I once more headed outside. This time, he came as far as the stairs, and, with a great deal more encouragement, as far as the back door, but that was it. No further would he go.

Poor little guy, he sure has been spooked. One of his favourite places on earth has morphed into a dystopian nightmare where excruciating pain strikes at random. Oh the unpredictability and inexplicability of it all! I wonder how long before he forgets, and takes up his crown to be king of his small kingdom again. Not too long I hope.