The Dog Blog with Kathryn Socie

Lovin’ the Little House

By Kathryn Socie, 6-11-08

The weather’s gone wonky, sending Weez to the little house.  With a totally delightful irrational fear of loud, booming noises, the thunder yesterday turned Weez, my 8 year-old blue dog, into a heavy breathing, clingy, emotional mess.  Much as my compassion is expansive, a dog launching on to my head in the wee hours of the morning, digging into my skull frantically in a useless effort to quell her utterly screwed up notion that thunder is the purest of evils falls way outside my touchy feely zone.  Going to work with claw marks extending from my eyeballs has never been a look I’ve necessarily aimed to achieve.

This incident occurred after a reign of Weez fear during which she destroyed part of a door and pulled a Houdini squeezing through three inches of window only to be spotted by my neighbor (thankfully) who let her back in the house, closing the window. So I resurrected a crate from storage, decorated it nicely and introduced Weez to the world of safe confinement—the little house. 

To my utter surprise, she loves it. No joke.  While I beat myself up with guilt at the thought of sticking my dog in a box and locking her up, she has taken to lounging and sleeping in it even when I am around—and fighting with Walker over who had first dibs.  A welcome relief when dealing with any whacked out dog-ism, but this one especially. See, this particular whacked-ness makes Weez a serious danger to herself and has already gotten her into a world of trouble. 

Weez got picked up by Animal Control a few years back while roaming the streets and her then-owner failed to bail her out despite being contacted.  I came across her when, for reasons still unknown to me, I decided I’d pop into Animal Control and actually thought I could leave empty handed.  One short stroll down the kennel aisle and I was done for.  There was Weez, sitting perfectly with sad eyes, pleading her case. Upon catching a glimpse of my suckerness, she put one paw up against the chain link for increased pathetic appeal.  She was definitely working me and she was good.  The only information they had on her was the tidbit about her owner, that she could get out of any fence—wire mesh, 8 ft wood planks, you name it- and she was as nice as they come. 

She can and she is. 

Nothing can confine this dog-- except the little house.  While it has never necessarily been a problem for me (digging in the door will cost some cash, however), I am pretty sure it’s what got her in the clink in the first place.  I have seen her athletic prowess, scaling anything and everything to get to me on the other side—primarily when my leaving is an outright injustice or when it is so obvious that I plain forgot her.  I have witnessed too many times the crevices that she somehow squeezes herself into when she is bio-chemically forced to take cover after hearing thunder, gun shots, a back firing car. In the beginning, early in our bonding phase, we did a few “baby Jessica” reenactments wherein I don a headlamp and rescue her from the bottom of the well she threw herself in—it’s actually the back deck, but you get the idea.

For whatever reason—insert dreamy anthropomorphizing descriptor here-- she now sticks with me even when I know she wants to bolt and run.  As soon as her head drops, her nubby tail cups her hind end with kung fu grip and she leans into me, I know she longs for that long, dark well in which to dive, duck and cover.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.