My Uncle Casey has a gorgeous Black Lab who washed out of service companion school for being too affectionate. Thus Augie is impeccably trained and super sweet. Augie could have tea with the Queen.
Cousin Craig has two brilliant hyperkinetic Border Collies who work with him in his Canada Geese removal business.(www.movetheflock.com)
My pal Steven has two sweet, stately greyhounds retired from earning big bucks as racers.
But my dog, Lily, SHE has a unique skill.
For the past week she's been in the charge of the lesser parent, the one who actually goes to work during the day and is not available to scratch her belly at will.
With each successive day Charlie has been travelling, it seems she spends the entire day practicing dejection and exploring new guilt buttons to push.
Thus, I have allowed her out of the crate during the day and even deigned to allow her to sleep with me instead of in the crate.
I'll admit, I'm a coward. For as long as I remember there have been monsters under my bed and yellow-eyed gargoyles in the closet. Add in the semi-rational fears associated with living in the heart of downtown and I appreciate sleeping with a large, retired cop.
Lily , with her wagging tail and nearly nonexistent bark, is not a reasonable substitute for that purpose, but at least she can cuddle up in the glow of the television.
The first night, I woke with a start to Lily standing on the edge of the bed, back fur straight up barking into the corner.
In one shaking motion to the nightstand, I grabbed the panic alarm button and my cell phone while I turned on the light. It revealed .... nothing.
Logically, I could see there was nothing there. The light revealed the cat sleeping soundly on the pillow. But my heart was beating so hard it was pushing my fillings out from the bottom.
I spent the rest of the night watching TV with the lights on. The next night she slept in her crate.
She was sleeping at my feet yesterday evening as I sat at my craft table experimenting with a new cardmaking technique. Suddenly, she scrambled to her feet and started to growl. Because of the nuance of color, my craft room is lit like an operating room. The ceilings are stark white. She was now barking, fur punked straight up along her backbone, at the corner opposite the door. Nothing human had entered the room.
Did my dog talk to spirits? I thought about how our deed went back to the first Mayor of Buffalo, of the wars fought on this space before and after it was tribal land. I wondered if cable might be interested in Ghost Whisperer meets Dog Whisperer. I was writing the pitch in my mind as she ran along the wall barking.
Then I spotted it. All of this furor was for a spider -- small, confused, insignificant arachnoid.
Lily doesn't bark at cats and rarely other dogs. She stood stunned the first time she ran into a bunny in the backyard. But spiders...
I told Craig he could now offer a subspeciality - removing Canada Geese and locating spiders.
He wasn't written back.
But, especially until Charlie gets back, Lily is available for night work.

Copyright 2008 Judi Griggs