A Cry For Help

Okay, let’s get this straight right off the bat. I am not my mom. I’m Wendell. My mother is… well, we’ll get to that in a minute. My brother George, who isn’t really my brother because we’re not the same breed or anything but Mom calls him my brother, showed me how to do this so I’m taking my turn at blogging.

My name is Wendell the Snarfflehound. I earned this noble name because my mom had to do the doggie Heimlich maneuver on me several times as a puppy due to my tendency to snarffle down my food. I’ve out grown that and am now more commonly called Bug. Mom says I’m like a diddle bug because I hop backwards when I’m excited. I don’t think there is such a thing as a diddle bug, but I humor her. I am, in actuality a miniature dachshund, emphasis on the miniature. I weigh all of ten lbs. Everyone who sees me in the dog park or the local pet store thinks I’m still a puppy. I guess you could say at 5 years old, I’m aging well.

Now I’ve taken over my mother’s blog for one very important reason. This is a cry for help. I think she has finally gone round the bend. Tonight, when we should be cuddled on the couch watching an old movie…well, she watches the movie and I do the cuddling, we are not.

Is it because she’s writing? I don’t mind when Mom writes. She says one day when she’s rich from writing or wins the lottery we’re moving to a house in the country and she’s going to raise dachshunds. This sound good to me so I’m saying, butt in chair, fingers on keyboard, Mom. When Mom writes I have a very warm and snuggly red sweater that used to be Mom’s until I drug it off the couch one day and wrapped up in it. Then Gracie Sue came over (she’s the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and not the brightest pup in the world) and she chewed all the buttons off. Mom was rather irate. But now the red sweater is mine.

So did I spend this evening wrapped in my warm fuzzie? No. My mother, usually very sensitive to the needs of a mini doxie, took all of us outside into the backyard in the dark. In the dark! She sat on the back steps and just stared up at the trees. Now I like trees as much as the next dog, but come on. Why on earth were we sitting in the yard watching a bunch of scrawny old pine trees sway in the breeze? A strong breeze.

I crawled up on Mom’s lap to get a few answers. And do you know what she said? “Storm’s coming. I love storms.” She loves storms? Tetched I tell you, the woman is tetched.

So she sits there staring up at the cloud covered sky, not a star visible, and closes her eyes. She starts telling me about how when she was young she’d sit out on the front porch in the porch swing during storms and just rock and listen to the thunder and the rain. She even whispered that sometimes she would sing as she rocked, letting the sound of the storm drown out the fact that she can’t carry a tune.

So I’m sitting on her lap, the wind is blowing and it’s cold. Yes, cold. It had to be all of 65 degrees Fahrenheit. (I don’t know exactly what that works out to in Celsius, but for a mini doxie it’s cold.) The other dogs are running around the backyard like fools. I’m sitting there on Mom’s lap listening to her humming. And she’s not looking at me. I even did my best pitiful dachshund shiver for sympathy and she just patted my head and said it wasn’t that cold.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t, but I wanted to go inside! My fuzzie was inside. My food bowl is inside. My treats are inside. Everything I need is inside. Why am I sitting in the backyard?

It took positively forever, but finally Mom sighed and stood up. She said we had to go in so she could check her mail once more and go to bed. Finally she starts making some sense. Only the next time she pulls a stunt like this I’m calling the dachshund rescue people and filing a formal complaint.