Category: Annie

I like my butter soft. I don’t think that’s so strange, but it has been a source of lighthearted contention in our house since we’ve had a house to share.

You see Lauren is firmly entrenched in the camp that believes butter should be refrigerated lest it go rancid over time. Being someone who won’t drink milk that’s even close to the expiration date, I can see her point of view. While I have experienced the joy of lumpy milk first-hand, I have never sampled the taste of rancid butter. Perhaps that is why my point of view differs from Lauren’s.

Aged milk aside, I like my butter to be soft, which means that it needs to be warm, which, in turn, means it shouldn’t be stored in the refrigerator. Cold butter means firm butter, and firm butter just doesn’t spread nicely. The risk of torn toast is simply too great for me to risk firm butter, let alone hard butter. I spend a great deal of time and energy toasting my bread to a perfect texture and golden-brown color. I am certainly not going to risk my handiwork with something so vulgar as firm butter.

As an aside, I would like to point out that no one uses the term “buttery” to describe something hard and cold. If my butter isn’t buttery, than what is? How can the thing I’m using to describe a texture and consistency not exhibit the fundamental principles used as the basis for identifying said principles?  Call me pedantic, but if my butter isn’t buttery, I’m not eating it. I have my standards after all.

While I like my butter to be soft, Annie has no such preference. She likes her butter in any form, so long as it’s available, though to be painfully accurate, availability is rarely a concern of hers. Annie doesn’t just like butter, it is by far, her favorite food, and she will do whatever it takes to sneak a lick or even steal an entire bar of the stuff. Annie it would seem, can not be bothered with the rantings of a butter connoisseur.

Since Lauren wanted to keep the peace, she took to storing the butter in the microwave when we were not at home. The butter stayed soft, and Annie couldn’t figure out how to open the microwave door, though I did catch her staring at it in contemplation more than once. Lauren then took to storing everything even remotely edible in the microwave. At first we used the oven, but quickly learned that we often forgot when the oven was full. Apparently bananas, butter, grapes and clementines don’t do well in an oven when it’s preheated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Who knew?

Annie altered the battlefield in the butter wars, as the ever escalating games of “hide the butter” have come to be known. You see if we left the butter out — so that it might attain the perfect consistency needed for easy spreading — it would disappear. We thought for a time that we had been visited repeatedly by the butter fairy, but we grew suspicious at the callous lack of dollars where the butter had once been. We were also concerned about the teeth marks on the butter dish. According to my measurements of the bite radius, the butter fairy would have been about 120 pounds, sporting large fangs and powerful jaws. Somehow this didn’t line up with the mental image I’d always had of fairies. To be fair though, I’m far from an expert on the subject, regardless of what my middle school gym teacher might have said to the contrary.

Early in the butter wars, Annie took an entire stick off of the counter, and when Lauren caught her in the act, Annie chewed furiously in an attempt to swallow the stick before Lauren could take it from her. Convinced that we needed better armor, Lauren bought a closing butter dish. Once we contained the butter, Annie stole not only the butter, but the butter dish as well. She then proceeded to lick and chew the butter dish in an attempt to extract the last molecules of butter essence from the plastic tray. We threw that butter dish out.

Lauren then bought a Rubbermaid butter dish with a “locking” lid. I use the term locking loosely, since the magic ferret-dog managed to take the dish, dismantle it, enjoy the contents, then summarily destroy it. Annie’s lust for butter, it would seem, knew no bounds.

She had eaten through one butter dish, and tried desperately to destroy the next. Lauren then went all out and bought a heavy-duty industrial grade mil-spec space-age locking Tupperware butter dish. This dish was a piece of engineering magnificence, guaranteed to keep the butter safe from shark attacks and two-year-olds. Surely it would keep a puppy at bay, even if she was a 120 pound ferret-puppy from the magical land of Newfoundland where butter fairies roam.

I am happy to report that thus far the beast has been unable to gain entry to the butter. The super-dish does sport marks from one night’s attack, but her efforts were for naught, and for now, our butter remains safe. Sure we eat dinner every night with a butter dish marred by bite marks. Sure we sometimes have to scoop the butter from the lid instead of the tray. Apparently she rolls the super-dish around at night in an attempt to get at the tasty butter inside. None of that matters. What matters is that, for now at least, we have outsmarted the ferret-dog.

Our butter remains soft and the integrity of my victory toast is assured. Life is good… for now.

The old man sat downstairs talking to his lovely wife. The lovely wife was saying good night as she did every night. The old man had always been a night owl and went to bed long after everyone else was asleep. As she reached in to kiss him, a noise caught his attention. She’s in the sink he thought. He pulled away from his bride and left the office to run upstairs. He had to be quick. There was no proof without catching her in the act.

The old man could still pretty spry when he wanted to be, though the years had limited the duration of his sprints. He knew his limitations. He just needed to get to the kitchen before she jumped down. As he rounded the landing that served as a midway point on the stairs, he pivoted on the railing and launched himself upstairs. As his vision cleared the top floor, he could see the beast. I have you now…

With both humans downstairs, the beast had infiltrated the kitchen and decided to feast on the bits of chicken stuck to the tray soaking in the sink. She had stood on her hind legs, and was standing at the kitchen sink like a person. The beast was as large as a man, and twice as strong. Her two front legs supported her massive frame while her head bent down into the sink in order to grab the tasty morsels from the pan.

Adrenalin fueling the chase, the old man reached the top of the stairs in an instant. He had planned to run up behind the beast so that he could surprise her. If he could scare her while she fed, perhaps she would learn not to eat from the sink. That was the plan anyway. It seemed like a good plan before it all went bad.

As the old man reached the second floor, something unexpected happened. Though he couldn’t be sure what was wrong, his aging brain had time to register one important alert. With pain imminent, the old man’s brain sounded the alarm to all bodily systems: Warning – collision imminent – brace for impact!

The human body is a marvelously complex machine. The brain serves as the command center for much of the body. Like a large sea vessel, when emergencies are encountered, alarms are initiated. In this case, the ship had lost it’s bearings due to a sudden unplanned change of course. Specifically, instead of moving forward, the ship was now diving straight for the floor. Old ships are not submarines after all, and sudden acceleration towards the sea floor is cause for alarm. So it was with the old man. He was not built for sudden acceleration towards the floor. Still, the old man’s brain was pretty active. Aware of sudden danger, his brain recorded the following actions and alerts in short order:

• Hands: pain
• Elbows: pain
• Knees: pain
• Cause: Sudden lack of ability to remain upright
• Secondary Cause: Falling
• Primary Cause: Tripped
• Root cause analysis: The Beast
• Alternate Beast Identification: Ferret Dog
• Canonical Name of Ferret Dog: Annie

• Emergency Restorative Action 1: Scream in anger and pain
• Emergency Restorative Action 2: Re-evaluate horizontal position
• Reset all systems and report
• Reset Initiated…
  

• Critical systems: nominal
• Legs: pain
• Arms: pain
• Man-parts: How YOU doin’?

• System has been reset
• Prime Directive: Kill Ferret Dog

As I flopped on the ground trying to decide which limb hurt the most, Annie jumped down from her feast while Lauren came upstairs to see what all the fuss was about. It hurt to get up. It hurt to do anything.  Somehow, someone had come in and replaced my body with that of an old man’s. As an additional insult, it would seem that the old man’s body had clown feet that had hooked the top step of the stairs. None of that mattered though. It was hard to see through the pain, impossible to think through the rage. One thought consumed me. 

Kill The Beast!

Annie enjoyed the advantage of youth. The beast, however, lacked wisdom. Though I might have been unable to run up a flight of stairs while remaining upright, I should damn well be able to outsmart a one year old dog.  Life isn’t like it is in books though. Slowly I climbed to my feet while Lauren watched, her concern masked by her strenuous attempts at curtailing her laughter.

Annie cowered in the corner. She had no fear of physical retribution, for we had never laid a hand on her in anger. She knew though — oh the beast knew what she had done. She wore her guilt as if it were a necklace of thick iron. Her head hung under the weight of it, her eyes looking up at me with a pitiful stare.

Still my fury was consuming. I gathered my bruised old body, stood towering over her and pointed a shaky finger at her. The only word I could manage through the anger and pain hung in the air as I glared at her.

“You…”

That was it. That was all the English I could conjure. My internal conflict had consumed all of my mental resources leaving me with only basic language skills. I wanted to kill the Ferret Dog, but I could never hurt her. The beast had won. I’m not entirely sure how, but she had won.

I gathered up my bruised body along with my battered dignity and limped back downstairs where I could hurt in peace. The battle had ended; I had lost. Losing wasn’t the problem though. What bothered me most was that for all my pain and humiliation, the she-beast hadn’t learned a damned thing.

Annie is not allowed in the office. I know that, and she knows that, but only one of us cares. I’ll leave you to decide which one of us that might be. It might be the same one that mutters “stupid dog” under his breath from time to time, but I don’t want to ruin the surprise for you.

Annie knows that so long as part of her is outside the perimeter that defines the office, she is being “good”. Good, as with most issues of morality, is a topic open to interpretation. It is also therefore subject to the interpreter’s point of view. Someone it would seem, has informed Annie of this moral loophole.

Take for example the included picture of Annie. This picture was taken from inside the office. As you can see, the curve of her spine is on the tile – outside the office – while the majority of her body is on the carpet – inside the office. This position, while technically adhering to the letter of the law, flaunts her disdain for the spirit of the law.

Annie didn’t just walk up and lay down in that spot. She started by sitting down in the hallway outside the office with no part of her body near the door. Over the course of the next fifteen minutes though, she stretched, and rolled, and twisted like the bored child that she was. Idle paws as it were.

I imagine that during one of those contortions, her back paw must have touched the rug. Jackpot! she surely thought. With a paw on the rug, the incursion could begin. The game had begun. Next a casual roll would flip her tail onto the rug. Of course she wasn’t comfortable that way, so she rolled over to the other side. Two feet in!

If we happened to have seen her at this point, she would have looked all twisted and uncomfortable. We usually comment on how strange she is, or how she sleeps like a teenager when we see her like that. It’s all a ruse though, for she had a plan and she was determined. She was on a quest to violate a rule she found offensive – a mission of civil disobedience. Since I am the giver of rules, I am therefor “the man”. She is my very own Abbie Hoffman in a black and white fur coat. Thank God she can’t write her own book.

As she continued her machinations, more and more of her body poured into the office. She was slow and deliberate and moved in such a way that I never noticed her efforts. She was on a covert mission like a Marine sniper in the tall grass: quiet, deceptive and deadly. I never saw her move. Like the intended target of the sniper in the grass, I never figured out what was going on until it was too late.

After her dance of deceit I turned my chair and saw her curled up as you see her now. Her mission had been accomplished. She had quietly infiltrated my lair and delivered the fatal shot without making a sound. Her stealth was admirable – her mission a success. Without uttering a sound or causing a fuss, she had not only shown her contempt for my rules, she had done it in such a way that I didn’t see her do it. Therefore, according to the rules of war and the articles of the Geneva Convention, I could not tell her that she was bad. Had she just walked in and sat like that, she would have been open to my counter attacks. She was far too smart for that.

So Annie sits with 90 percent of her body in the office, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. Stupid dog indeed.

I am a fan of experiences that make me question reality. Imagine getting ready to lift a heavy container. You flex your muscles and lift, only to discover that the container is empty. Your brain panics for a split second as it tries to reconcile your previous perception of the container’s weight with the reality of the empty vessel in your hands. Experiences like this are a rarity, for our perceptions of the world have been reinforced through years of conditioning. Water in a river will be cold to the touch. Fire will be hot. Heavy things are heavy. We expect our world to be predictable.

Some things are never predictable though. Spill paint and try to predict where it will splatter. There is a randomness to life that is reassuring, for strict order would make living unbearable to even the most committed of control freaks.  Still, this randomness is in itself, reliable. We can rely on the fact that splattered paint will create a different pattern every time. There are certain laws to which the universe is bound. In certain cases, where order might otherwise lead us to madness, randomness is key. If every sunset were identical, then none of them would be spectacular.

Life with a puppy is a mixture of predictability and randomness; order and chaos. A puppy will grow, be silly, play and love. She will also nibble, chew, and make a mess of damn near everything while she learns the rules. While the acts themselves may seem random, they will occur with certainty assuming the puppy leads a relatively normal life. Try though to predict where the puppy’s drool will end up when she shakes her head and you will see the inherent randomness found within the universe. While you can safely assume that most of the drool will end up on the floor, this is simply the nature of gravity. Where on the floor it resides is a far more complicated matter.

Trying to determine where drool lands is not an act that calls reality into question. Big dogs drool, and the drool goes everywhere. My reality is filled with proof — I don’t need to study the matter any further. We need a different type of experience to test reality. For a truly jarring experience akin to lifting a surprisingly empty container, we need only one thing; a special kind of dog. We need a dog that that cares not for the rules of nature, nor for the equations that describe the laws of physics. Luckily, I know of such a dog.

I am a 45 year old writer and science buff who thinks he has a pretty fair grasp on reality. Sure there might be zombies outside the fence at night, but until you can prove to me that there are not zombies, their existence is, at the very least, a possibility. One fine night I opened the sliding glass door in the dining room to call the dogs. Upon opening said door I saw dog number one laying on the deck wagging like the good boy that he is. Guinness thumped to me his lazy Hi Daddy – I like you but you’re not the Mommy greeting that I so often receive. Not seeing Annie, I leaned my head out a bit and looked to the left where I should have been able to see the entire back yard. Only instead of the yard, I found myself looking eye to eye with dog number two; Annie, resident she-beast with the newfound ability to bend time and space.

For one reality bending second, I looked into the eyes of the mischievous one year old Landseer. She was smirking. So help me she was smirking! My brain clicked into high gear and tried to reconcile the perceived discrepancy that had lead me to question reality, and thus my very sanity. The logical process initiated by my brain unfolded as follows, all in the span of 1/10th of a second:

• Annie is a dog
• Annie is a big dog
• I am six feet tall
• Annie, though a big dog, is not six feet tall
• Annie is looking me in the eye
• Kate Beckinsale is hot
• Can dogs fly? No
• Am I kneeling? No
• Is Annie on her hind legs? No
• I wonder if Kate Beckinsale likes dogs
• Is Annie a werewolf? No – my tests ruled that out last week.
• If I’m six feet tall, and Annie is not, then how can she look me in the eye?
• Have I fallen? No
• What would Kate Beckinsale do?
• I bet she would tell me that Annie’s sitting on the storage box
• I wonder if… wait… what?

Annie had chosen to sit on the large plastic outdoor storage box on the deck. We have since witnessed her on the patio table as well. Why? Because she’s Annie. Apparently being Annie involves a blatant disregard for anything regarding normalcy. There seems to be no other reason that we could discern. She just likes to be different. Annie came to us from a rescue foster home where she spent the first few months of her life with not only other dogs, but cats as well. She seems to have taken the characteristics and mannerisms that appealed to her from each species. Then again I think Annie is simply ammused when I am forced to question my own sanity. I wonder what Kate Beckinsale would think.

While my stories about Annie seem to revolve around her naughty adventures, I felt that it was time to give Annie her due and report on her good qualities.

The Newfoundland Club of America includes the breed standard, used when showing dogs for competition. The breed standards has this to say about Newfie temperament:

Sweetness of temperament is the hallmark of the Newfoundland; this is the most important single characteristic of the breed

If Annie is anything, she is sweet. She is so sweet that she can be down right annoying in fact. One of my many nicknames for Annie is the Love Sponge. She needs – no demands – love from everyone she meets. If you’re in the room with her, you better be loving her, or she will come over and nudge, paw or lick you until you do.

We have a rule in our house that the dogs should lay down while we’re eating dinner. The last thing anyone wants is a 140 pound drooling monster watching their every move while they try to enjoy their meal. It’s unsettling, not to mention messy. When Annie is in an I don’t recognize your authority mood, she will sit next to me and rest her head on my lap. This is a clear violation of the rules, but she knows she’s cute and all she wants is some love, so what’s the harm? When my attention lapses her tongue might sneak onto my plate, but that’s my fault for leaving my plate where she can get it. Maybe I should make a rule about that.

Annie will walk up to anyone, jam her nose under their hand or arm and flip it up onto her head. If you move your hand away, she’ll just do it again, so you might as well pet her. Once you pet her though, she owns you, so be prepared to pet her forever.

Annie is one of the most gentle dogs I’ve ever met. We never had to teach her to take snacks gently. She sticks her tongue out from between her teeth and pull the snack away from your fingers. I wish we could teach Guinness to do that. He’s getting better, but some days I think feeding lions at the zoo would be less dangerous.

So you see Annie isn’t a bad dog, so much as she is mischievous. She’s a very smart girl who’s looking for adventure. It just so happens that her adventures come at our expense. That isn’t her fault. At least that’s what Lauren tells me.

After reading so many glowing reviews of the Gentle Leader, we bought one and took Annie out in the yard to give it a try. More accurately, Lauren took Annie while I took the camera. Somehow I knew this would be an event worth recording.

The Gentle Leader is much like a halter for a horse in that it wraps around the dog’s snout and head. Though some people mistake it for a muzzle because of the way it looks, the dog’s mouth is free to open with a Gentle Leader. The leader works because the leash is attached under the dogs nose. Where the nose goes, so goes the dog. At least that’s how it works on paper.

As with most things involving Annie, this was not to go as planned. Lauren got the Gentle Leader on her, and Annie promptly set to scraping it off with her paw. We figured it was too tight, so we re-read the instructions while Annie furiously pawed at her face in a vain attempt to remove the foul restraint. Though we felt that it was properly applied, we loosened the harness a bit just in case. She still didn’t like it, but at least she stopped pawing.

Lauren clipped the leash on and started to walk. Walking with Annie was not a pleasant experience – hence our experiment with the Gentle Leader. Annie’s lack of manners was our fault of course. We had not yet spent enough time with her, so she hadn’t learned the rules. Lauren had walked with her every day, but Lauren isn’t quite as strict as me. That’s not to say that she didn’t do well, but rather that Annie didn’t yet respect her as the one true alpha female.

As Lauren and Annie started to walk, the excitement began. Annie took a couple of steps, then jumped into the air spiraling like a dolphin at Sea World. When she landed she shook her head trying get the infernal straps off of her head. She reared up on her hind legs, bucking like a stallion.

“I don’t think she likes it”, I said, chuckling.

“Ya’ think?” was Lauren’s only reply.

The Gentle Leader is marketed as the five minute attitude adjuster. After five minutes Lauren got her to stop bucking and writhing, but I wasn’t entirely convinced of Annie’s newfound manners. We decided to give her a break and took the harness off. Annie’s plan had come to fruition. Sensing the long awaited freedom from her binds, Annie erupted into a full-blown heebie-jeebie running fit. Apparently she wasn’t tired after all.

She ran in the yard, bounced off of the fence and the trees, then headed straight for the mud. We had been having a drainage problem on one side of the yard, so we had worked with Annie on the dry side to avoid it. The muddy section was only about 10 feet by four feet, and was in the rarely used corner of the yard behind the patio. Our fenced yard was almost an acre in size, so the muddy area wasn’t even visible from where we had been working. Annie knew well where it was though.

“Annie No!” I yelled. She could not have cared less. She ran to the mud, then stood there as her feet slowly sank in. I imagine that she enjoyed the way the cool mud squished between her toes. She just stood there and stared at me. She knew she was being bad – she just didn’t care. After soaking for a few seconds, she started to pull her feet out of the mud one by one and then put them down. A rude slurping sound accompanied each foot and she lifted it out. I think she liked that too. Slurp… Squish….

“Annie! Get out of the mud!” Slurp… My commands fell on uncaring ears. As if knowing what I was thinking, she slowly – deliberately – laid herself down in the mud. All the while she stared at me with obvious defiance. Squish…

“Annie! No!” Still she stared. She knew I wouldn’t come into the mud to get her. Her belly now in the wet sloppy mud, she went for the checkered flag and put her head down with a final defiant squish.

One word echoed in my head. It started as a whisper, but had steadily increased in intensity. It wasn’t a nice word when misused, but it applied, and its double meaning appealed to my literary sensibilities. My eyes narrowed as Annie watched. Her head slid forward as she anticipated my next word. Overcome with frustration and resolved to let her know it, I let loose the word. In a low voice that only Annie could hear I growled, “Bitch!”

That’s what Annie had wanted all along. She had succesfully pushed by buttons and she knew it. Once the line had been crossed, she got up from the mud with a slurp, then ran at me at flank speed. Anger turned to fear as I considered the possibility of 100 pounds of muddy Landseer Newfoundland taking me down. On the video that I was shooting, there was a noticeable lack of my previous resolve as I exclaimed “Oh crap!”

She veered off at the last second and ran to the opposite end of the yard. Lauren, her part in the training debacle since complete, stood on the deck and laughed.

The score as it now stands is Annie: 1, Gentle Leader: 0. A rematch has not yet been scheduled.

Annie likes butter. No that’s not accurate; Annie loves butter. We’re not sure why. All we know is that she once she had a taste of it she’s done everything in her power to get more.

We have had whole sticks of butter disappear from the kitchen counter while Lauren prepared dinner. It doesn’t matter where on the counter the butter was placed. She can get it from the farthest reaches of any flat surface.

We have had entire sticks of butter deftly snatched from the refrigerator door while someone was busy reaching for something else. I would usually enter the scene with the kids chasing Annie while she trotted around the house with her tail in the air and a stick of butter hanging from her mouth. As I’d watch in the typical bewilderment of a confused father, snippets of the song Yakety Sax would echo in my head.

Annie will often sit next to someone at the dinner table, leaning against them while begging for affection. Being a clever girl, she picks the person who’s either near the butter, or who is eating something with butter on it. She will often sit next to one of the kids while they enjoy their summer corn on the cob. They’ll give her some pets, eat some corn, then when they’re not looking, Annie will lean in, reach out with her long tongue and take a leasurly lick of the salty melted stuff.

Annie, being part ferret, can lean her head over backwards and to the side to get the precious butter. She will sit next to someone who is not eating a buttered treat, then contort herself over to the person next to them when no one is looking. It’s like having a black and white octopus at the dinner table. Those of you with resident octopuses will know what I mean.

Sometimes our Annie has no patience for subterfuge. On these days she will use the shock of a frontal attack to her advantage. Lauren will be sitting opposite me at the end of the table. The butter will be near the edge, being the last item to be placed since it’s (barely) safer on the counter. After we all sit down and start eating, Annie will just walk up and lick the butter right there in front of God and everyone. Since we’re usually waiting for some sort of sly maneuver, she sometimes gets a couple of licks in before Lauren yells “Hey!” and snatches the butter away. Annie then slinks off to plan her next move while the rest of us laugh.

Part of the problem is that while the person who’s butter gets licked is usually quite offended, the rest of us laugh like idiots. I guess we’re all just enablers in this house. I find it interesting that these shenanigans rarely happen on my side of the table though. Annie knows who the Alpha is in this house – at least when I’m looking. Of course we’re all eating freshly licked sticks of butter so I guess the joke is on me.

GAD

Eighteen hours.

That’s how long the new screen door survived. We enjoyed the bug-free environment while it lasted, but alas, it was not meant to be. I know what you’re thinking. Let me help you to remove all doubt; Annie did it. This time there was no malice of forethought – no desire to do wrong. At least none that we could prove.

Annie had ruined the original screen weeks ago. I only bought a new one yesterday because the mosquitoes moved in with us. Without a screen door to keep them at bay, hoards of the winged bloodsuckers had flown into our house to feast on our warm bodies while we slept. While I’m fairly obsessive about keeping the doors locked at night, during the day they’re left open while we’re home. We don’t have air conditioning, so leaving the door open is the only way to get a breeze in that part of the house. With no screen to protect us, the insects had come a-callin’. Since Lauren had talked me out of hunting all the tiny vampires with my shotgun, I did the next best thing and bought a new screen door. Even with today’s prices, ammo would have been cheaper.

Annie is still a ferret puppy, and is therefore prone to attacks of crazed energy that my mother would call “the heebie-jeebies”. Regardless of where she finds herself during such an episode, she proceeds to run at flank speed until meeting an obstruction or simply deciding to change course. She then digs in and rebounds to run in a different direction, repeating the madness until boredom or exhaustion overtakes her. This maniacal behavior can happen at any time, but we’ve learned to expect it just after dinner. Yesterday was no exception, and Annie ran outside like a squirrel on a Red-Bull bender.

Deep in the midst of the heebie jeebies, Annie apparently decided that it was time to come back inside. As usual she ran up the 14 steps in two leaps, then rounding the corner of the deck, headed for the door. Without missing a beat, she continued her charge and leapt once more, soaring through the air towards the open door. This was the same door that had been open for weeks allowing her unfettered access to the house – the same door that had recently been covered with a new $128.95 screen.

The screen fought valiantly. Even with Annie’s considerable kinetic energy, the screen seemed to hold. Annie was the image of taught-muscled youth as she flew through the air. Her 100 ferret-pounds of mass met the screen dead center, her body crumpling into the tortured screen as the sickening sound of tearing fabric filled the air. As the door flexed under the attack, the force of impact caused the screen to tear perfectly across the bottom and halfway up one side. With the energy remaining from the impact, the screen ejected Annie unceremoniously to the deck. The battle was over; the screen had won. Though the screen had given its life to protect us from the large flying pest, it had successfully kept her out. Annie sat on the deck, no doubt confused by the sudden resistance where previously there had been none.

The screen had been here for all of 18 hours before it met its demise. Actually the screen still works pretty well, so I suppose it’s not a total loss. Because the screen tore on the edges, the door almost looks normal. Besides, now the dogs can come and go as they please through the new flap.  Marketing folks might even call it a design enhancement. My sanity on the other hand has taken another step down the very dark stairway to madness. Though I can’t see the bottom, I don’t think that there are many steps left.

GAD

We have a new screen door.

No I have not succumbed to pointless (and seemingly ubiquitous) “I’m making coffee!” blog entries. This screen door, like everything else it seems, is directly tied to Annie.

When we moved into our house back in 1997, the house had just been refitted with then-new Anderson windows and sliding glass doors. There are two beautiful sliding patio doors in our house; one upstairs in the dining room, and one downstairs in the family room. These sliding doors are our primary means of egress to the deck and back yard, so they are used frequently throughout the day.

The doors used to have beautiful wooden panels on the large sheets of glass. A matrix of intersecting decorative wooden strips made the doors look like they were made from 12 small panes of glass. They looked nice until Cozy learned to paw at the door to go out. Cozy eventually destroyed these strips, so for the past five years or so, the doors have been unadorned. Annie would have no doubt destroyed them anyway.

At some point in the past, Cozy had torn the screen on the upstairs door. The tear wasn’t large – maybe a few inches, and though ugly, the tear did not greatly affect the screen’s ability to keep bugs out. Then we got Annie.

Annie discovered that she could fit her pointy little ferret nose into this opening. She also discovered, that if she pushed, she could make the hole bigger! Bad dog!

I like to believe that there is a degree of decorum in my house. There is not of course, but I like to believe there are rules that was as civilized people try to follow. We all follow the unspoken rule that when having nice things, we must not destroy them lest they become ugly – or worse – useless things. Annie is a free spirit, who has no use for rules – especially unspoken ones.

One fine day, Annie was trying to get inside. I’m not sure why – zombies in the yard maybe? We do have a bit of a zombie problem here in New Jersey. Whatever the reason, Annie stood at the door, woofed her little ferret woof, and becoming impatient with our inaction, pushed her nose onto the screen as dogs often do. Annie is no ordinary dog though.

Annie the ferret-dog pushed her nose into the hole just as I walked up. “Annie NO!” I yelled as I ran up to stop her. Feeling panicked, she did what any crazed 100 pound puppy-ferret would do; she pushed.

I couldn’t get there in time. I tried – I swear that I tried. I can vividly remember the sound. The awful sound of tearing screen fabric as Annie’s black and white nose with that cute patch of white came pushing through the tear. As if watching a demonic birth, the head came next. It was horrifying!

The closer I got to the wicked beast, the more agitated she got. Being fully committed she had made her choice. In one final push, 100 pounds of black and white mayhem came through the screen. What had been a three inch hole was now a tear that my eight-year-old could walk through. Annie, now inside, wisely ran to hide behind Lauren. In the stunned silence, all that could be heard was mumbled obscenities while I stood and stared at the wrecked door.

Guinness, having been out on the deck watching, waited for the excitement to end. As if nothing had  happened, he got up, and walked through the new opening that Annie had so thoughtfully provided.

Yesterday, I bought a new sliding screen door for the kitchen. Are there any bets as to how long it will last?

GAD