~ Fall Morning & Failed Launch ~
Dad stood at the open patio door asking if any of the four in our pack needed to take one more trip outside before the pack-parents moved on to their tasks. Dad shivered a bit as a blast of cold whipped past him and into the living room.
“No takers Dad”, Hazel noted as she walked down the hallway to her musing area, mentally lamenting the slow start to her impending winter coat.
If any of the younger pack forgot to finish their business, they would have to wait and muster up a good pestering session aimed at the most likely of the two-leggeds to relent quickly.
The clouds were thick, low, and menacing. They came in with a north wind that took the habit of sauntering outside right out of our full-belly natures.
If Pru and Keira delayed and played distracting themselves, I have no clue. I uncharacteristically trotted quickly into the house to get away from the wind without gauging the progress of the younger pack members. Even though I possess the thickest coat, (white with apricot highlights), I don’t like a brisk intrusion hitting my bloomers.
Since laying out in the sun was out of the question due to the weather, I decided to call a meeting with my Deputy Keira, and include our Conservation Officer Pru.
Keira didn’t want to leave Mom’s office, having found a warm sun-circle on the carpet.
“Let’s get a move on Deputy,” I said to Keira. “We haven’t had a meeting lately, and it’s the perfect day for it.”
Keira barely opened her eyes to ask me to round up Pru first, then come and get her. She rolled up on her back to expose chest and inner withers, careful to stay inside the drifting circle of warmth on the carpet.
Leaving Mom’s office and heading to where I last saw Dad, I could hear repeating commands to “Stop it… Quit it… Stop Pru.” Spoken softly, which meant two things. One, Pru is being a pill and Dad is trying to concentrate on something.
I turned the corner to find Pru repeatedly doing the following;
- Stand one pace back from Dad.
- Squish (loudly, intensely) tennis ball in mouth with head raised high.
- Flip head upward and release ball to land next to Dad on couch.
- Sit (politely), three quick seconds.
- Lower head.
- Leap forward to jam face into space between couch and cushion.
- Flip head up violently under where the ball is.
- Attempt to flip ball up in the air and to the right, closer to Dads hands on the keyboard.
- Back up, remove head from couch.
- Check progress.
- Repeat as needed.
I sat and watched four cycles of this until Pru achieved a successful launch.
Dad deftly caught the ball in mid-air and issued another, “Would… you… PLEASE… knock it off, Pru!”
He shoved the tennis ball behind the pillow he had behind him.
I took to an alert lay-down position knowing what was obviously about to happen.
Pru stood looking at the place were Dad’s hand had placed the ball. Her head tilted from one side and slowly to the other as dog-math calculated distance, proper launch point and—most importantly—amount of thrust to be applied.
I looked up to see Dad deep in thought, tap-tapa’ing on the keyboard, and completely unaware of Pru backing up slowly to a proper launch point. I wondered if she was going to try for retrieval in one swift attack, or torpedo her face behind Dad and jackhammer her way between pillow and cushion until she found her prize.
Minutes ago, I got to see Dad keep typing even though Pru was lifting his leg (and the laptop to a forty-five degree angle) over and over again. Let’s see if he can keep typing with a bucking bronco behind him.
Well, I never got the answer to that. Because just as Pru’s left rear paw (the one with the pink toe) twitched slightly to signal an upcoming aerial display, Dad looked around his laptop screen at Pru and said, “Thanks by the way, Pru, in calming down. I appreciate it. Need to get this done.”
Pru’s countdown stopped instantly, and she turned to me.
I got up, slightly disappointed at missing a humdinger of a display on both their parts. Of course my faithful readers know that, as sheriff of our pack, I would have had to step in if things got out of paw. After the initial impact of course.
While I had Pru’s attention, I told her to get the ball later because she couldn’t bring it to the meeting we were about to have.
Uncharacteristically, without pouting or grumbling about it, Pru dutifully followed me to Mom’s office to get Keira.
I decided last minute to have it in there. If we had it in the bedroom, Hazel might feel obliged to add her two cents a little too often. Last time the three of us had a meeting below the foot of the bed, Hazel got me so flustered with her constant interruptions from up above us that I barked, “AND just what would a hippy philosopher know about law enforcement matters?”
Hazel, thinking hippy was a reference to the shape or mis-shape of her hindquarters, looked back at said hindquarters and decided she wasn’t going to be insulted “that way,” and left the room.
“Meeting adjourned,” I said watching Hazel saunter out into the hallway.
“What’s a hippie?” Pru and Keira asked in unison.
“I don’t really know,” I answered. “Dad said one of his college professors was one.”
Anyway, that’s how the last meeting ended. I hoped maybe we’d have better luck here in Mom’s office.
Just as we settled and I opened my mouth to begin, Pru asked if I was going to end this meeting by calling somebody a name and hurting their feelings like last time.
“No, that was a one-time kind of thing, Pru.”
Pru sighed in disappointment and said that she learned what she thought would be a couple of good insults from Dad the other day when he was on the phone with something called a support line.
She went on to describe support as someplace you call and repeat words firmly and repeatedly, then sigh in exasperation and stare at the screen while punching numbers, then hold the phone to your ear in silence and pace around the kitchen island for a long time, then rapidly say the same story over and over in different ways, then stay silent for a while and pace, then tell the story again.
Then comes the best part. Dad says hello over and over again, looks down at the phone in disbelief… and… that’s when the insults fly.
“Would you like to hear them, Tuck?”
I looked up at Pru, then down at the now window-sized sun square on the carpet that was almost be big enough for all three of us.
I looked back to Pru and told her, “Not at this time Pru.”
I decided to give up and wing it. I told the two girls that the meeting was just to ask one of them to tell about something new that they had learned this week, and Pru had fulfilled that request.
“Meeting adjourned you two. Move over, Keira.”
~ Tucker Oso ~
