Since Sprocket learned to climb the stairs (and I must mention in my best "I-told-you-so" voice that I didn't want her to learn) she's become a charming member of the Sleeping Upstairs club. Every night she climbs the stairs and gets in bed with us or in hers on the floor. That's pretty cool. She likes sleeping and that makes it pretty easy to take care of her at night.
During the day, however, she's not so easy to deal with. Sprocket is not evil, but she is insidious. Generally well behaved, she has a penchant for knocking over trash cans and for pulling apart things that are meant to be left together.
Sprocket likes Kleenex. She tears them apart and leaves bits around. If I pick them up and put them back in the trash, she just pulls them back out again.
Is this a problem downstairs, too? Of course it is. The trash cans are higher there, though, and she doesn't have the option of knocking them over.
Then there's the burying problem, which I think I already mentioned. Burying stuff downstairs in a blanket isn't such a big deal. But hauling the same gross, spit-covered, possibly stinking bone up the stairs and trying to hide it under clothes or blankets or some other piece of who knows what lying around on the floor of my room is just unacceptable. Given my method of cleaning (what? there are methods?) I might not find this object until it had grown itself back into the animal it used to be.
Of course, there's the "floor = mine" problem. Anything on the floor is hers. I just leave way too much stuff on the floor. Waaaaay too much stuff. Perhaps Sprocket is here to tell me that. She might be telling me that by stepping on all of it.
If I put the laptop down on the floor or on the bed, she'll walk on it like it's no big deal. Even if I'm working on the laptop she'll step on the keyboard and look at me asking to play. In that case she managed to begin a novel. It would be a novel that started this way: "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaza".
Good start for a small dog.
I must beging to Sprocket-proof the upstairs. She can't get to the cleaning stuff as long as the bathroom closet door is closed (although there's Kleenex nirvana in there) and she doesn't stay in Pat's room for long. So I must learn where to put things that I don't want to get stepped on or ripped up or covered in dog gooey treat residue.
The simplest solution would be to put a gate at the foot of the stairs so she can't come up. The next would be to keep all doors at closed at all times. I'm sure there's another solution in between here, I'm sure, but the next option I see is to find a way to get stuff put away. Find a way to get stuff put away so that it stays away.
Ooooooooh dear. This could take a while. I should thank Sprocket for this kick in the pants, however.
Posted by dotty at October 18, 2003 11:21 AM