My dog Lucy has been covering the blog for me lately, as I’ve been preoccupied trying to get some lint out of my belly button. It tickles so much but I can’t get it all out. Anyway, here’s her blog today. I’ll be back tomorrow reviewing Andrew Peterson’s new record, Counting Stars. It’s a lovely record that makes you want to cut the top off your car and go driving at night through the hills. But for now, here’s some thoughts from Goose:
So Don and I have a good thing going. It’s just us up here in the condo, though it seems like we have somebody in the guest room every night. I like when we have guests but I wanted to say something about why I bark so loud when they first come to the door. I wanted to say why I run to the door and shout when I hear their suitcases rolling down the decking toward our door. I want to say why I keep barking even when Don pulls on my collar and tells me their name. I even growl sometimes but that’s not a bad thing in my opinion. I don’t bark for long and I don’t growl very much. But the thing is, I want to make it known that we have a good thing going and it’s our thing and before we invite them in I want them to know they can’t bring any crap in here that messes with what we’ve got. I want them to know the rules around here are that we take care of each other and we care about each other. I know intuitively that it’s a special thing to have water in your dish every night and food in your silver bowl in the morning, and a place to sleep and somebody who will take you out to pee. I know there are probably better places to live but I also know there are much worse places to live, and I know intuitively there are very real threats to love, and I know you are have to defend love with everything you’ve got until your voice doesn’t work anymore, until all the muscles in your body are tired from being tense. I know about a dog that got hit by bad guys while defending it’s home. They found it broken and dead in the laundry room. But he didn’t run, he just kept barking, defending his good thing.
It’s not in me to bite anybody. I don’t bite but if somebody came into our good thing and wanted to hurt it I’d stay and bark and it wouldn’t matter what they did to me I’d keep barking until somebody came for help. And if they hurt me I’d keep barking. When you build a Love Fort you die for it. That’s the cost of a Love Fort. You have to be willing to build it first and then you have to be willing to die for it. You have to defend things that are special.
But when I know people are supposed to be in our fort I get very excited. I run around the island in the kitchen so I can get some speed and I jump and put my paws in their stomach and I get in trouble every time. And when they are all talking in the living room I lay on my bed and watch them, and when they go to bed, I sniff around the guest room door and lay down in the hallway to listen to them go to sleep. I’m so very happy they are here. And when they get up in the morning and open the door I run in and say hello, and if one of them is still in the bed I stand on them so we can look out the window together. I always want to have people over. We have a good thing going, and when you have a good thing going, you defend it against the bad guys, and you invite the good guys in so you can share.
Having recently gotten a dog, I’ve come to appreciate Lucy’s blogs so much more. She’s very wise, and I think she should write her own book.