Friday Dog Blogging

It's been a traumatic week for The Codeman. We threw away his chair.

The chair in question was a rocker/recliner, a relic from when my parents first moved to Cold Comfort Cottage from the family farm two decades ago. If you recall Frasier's dad's chair on that sitcom -- the ratty monstrosity whose upholstery was held together with duct tape -- you will have some idea of what our chair looked like. My dog, being a dog, loved it, a fact which prolonged its presence in our home several years past its Dumpster date. But I finally dragged it to the curb this past weekend; I waited until The Codeman was safely tethered on the other side of the house, doing his evening constitutional, then maneuvered it out the front door and skidded it down the snowy driveway to the road.

When Cody came back inside he poked around the kitchen for awhile, snuffling for his crackers; then he trotted into the living room, aiming for his chair -- only to find an empty space. He screeched to a halt and did a double-take. He looked at us. He looked at the space. He sniffed the air. He looked at us again. He looked at the space again, for a long time. We had rocked his world.

Now, as much as I despised this chair, I felt really bad for my little dog. Considering that he's 91 years old by human reckoning, I felt like I'd just thrown away Grandpa's prized rocking chair. But The Codeman is getting over it. He's warming up to his dog bed -- a never-used dog bed that until now he'd refused to even go near and had been relegated to the basement until this week -- and if we put it on the sofa he'll curl up in it and sleep. Our plan is to get him so attached to it that we can eventually set it on the floor and he'll use it, and then we'll all have our own piece of living-room furniture. We'll see how that goes.

This little household drama came at the same time I finally gave in to my mother and got her an artificial tree; she'd seen it and touched it and approved of it, and then it went on sale so we got a good deal on it. She was happier about this than about her last Christmas and Mother's Day presents combined, so I really couldn't sulk about it. It's prelit with white lights, which is a win for me. And I'm getting a balsam wreath to satisfy my need for True Evergreen Experience.

The dog and I are a lot alike; we're both creatures of habit, and have deeply-held convictions about things, and get temporarily discombobulated by change. But we get over it, after awhile.

The Codeman, doing his yeti impersonation