On Power Struggles and Hurt Feelings:

My back is doing better and I am up and about but not back to exercising with the yoga too much but I am walking. (I know, with this heat I must be crazy.)

Well I kind of have to walk because I am taking care of the neighbors two dogs while they are on a weeks vacation. So a few times a day I walk down to their house and check on the dogs. I water, feed, walk and play with the neighbors dogs. Then I walk back up to my place.

This has been a strain on my two old lady dogs. Lady Short is thirteen and sleeps most all of the time now. But Lady Long is only eleven and wants to know why I’ve been sneaking out and playing with ‘the enemy.’

I have done everything short of stripping down and bathing myself and clothing to hide the fact when I come back home. Lady Short is aloof but Lady Long is in a state of high anxiety. She turns her back on me or bumps into my legs from behind. And when I look at her she turns away again with a look like, ‘what did I do?’

I don’t usually take this kind of job. One, I know my dogs don’t like it and two, I don’t like it much either. But Mountain Man agreed to it because they were in a bind and I’m the one doing it because he is busy in the garden getting the crops planted. I can walk the dogs in the shade but I can’t stay out of the sun in the garden.

How do you get it across to them that it is only temporary and that you still love them best? Their usually good behavior is quickly deteriorating. We have barking for no reason, puddles on the bathroom floor at night, not coming when called, and down right defiance to commands. And It’s only been three days.

I try to keep their schedule and I give them as much or more attention as I did before. But that is hard when they will have none of it. (You can lead a dog to it’s water dish but you can’t make it drink.) So now I am an outcast in my own home. Traitor. Adulteress. I have given care to another dog without their permission. I have sinned and must pay for it.