My Life, As Told Between (Baby Cakes') Naps

As told to me by T.

We’ve been very diligent about keeping Alfie off the furniture and have been mostly successful so far, helped largely by the fact that Alfie is not actually interested in getting on any of the furniture. Except for a little white armchair in the living room that happens to be in front of a window overlooking the street. He LOVES sitting on that chair and watching for cars and strangers. He also loves that we leave that window open to cool down the living room. So, in order to let him enjoy his favorite seat and still uphold our position as pack leaders, we’ve worked out a compromise. He doesn’t sit on that chair when we’re around and we ignore all the paw prints on the chair.

This delicate balance was threatened earlier this week. You see, lately, T’s been leaving for work around 4:30 am, which means that Alfie is usually still asleep when T gets up. More often than not, Alfie sleeps upstairs, but occasionally, he’ll pass out downstairs (in fact, the only place he doesn’t sleep is in his doggie bed). This particular morning, Alfie was curled up and fast asleep on his chair when T came downstairs. T didn’t know if Alfie fell asleep while watching for cars or deliberately set out to sleep there (unlikely since its necessary for him to curl up into a tiny little ball to fit in the chair), but he did know that for our charade to keep on working, he needed to either pretend not to see Alfie or get mad at him for sleeping on the chair. Thankfully, Alfie solved the problem.

As soon as Alfie woke up and saw that T was there, he quickly slunk out of the chair and stealthily settled onto the floor. Once there, he gave T a look as if to say, “What chair? I was never on any chair. Prove it. Those could be anyone’s paw prints.” T, in turn, gave Alfie a look which he hoped said, “I never saw you asleep on that chair. If I had, I would not tolerated it as I am the Alpha dog and you are not allowed on furniture.”

And with that silent exchange, balance was restored.  The end.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 5:55 am and is filed under Dog Tales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.