Yesterday morning I got a perky email from my older sister reminding me that her little dog would be visiting. I vaguely recalled an exchange some time earlier that went (in my memory) like this:
"Hey, we're going on vacation! Can you watch Dottie?" and I thought about it for about a millisecond and responded, "Sure."

End of discussion, right?

Well, apparently there's a point at which that "sure" becomes "Yes, today, please!" because Dottie arrived yesterday and I've spent the last 24 hours trying to figure out what happened between "vacation" and "sure."

Today at work, Bob asked me what, exactly I meant when I said the dog screamed all the time, so I did my imitation of Dottie's crescendo from a mere irritating whine to a full boar ear-piercing scream. When I finished, he was suitably impressed and remarked that he once knew a dog who sounded exactly like that. I didn't ask what happened to the dog.

But actually, the fact that I can present her with the novelty of chewing on marrow bones and other things does seem to mitigate her craziness a bit. I also gave her a peanut butter-filled frozen Kong today. I can't actually find the Kong, but I'm just going to assume it's in her crate somewhere and push aside the slight concern that she actually ate the whole thing.

She also makes my other dog, Nikki, seem comparatively sane, which is no mean feat. When I got home yesterday, Nikki was barking her fool head off all the way out the door and across the lawn. Then she stood barking at the fence until I walked through the house from the front door (where she'd exited the premises) to the back door where I bade her - in what now seems a needlessly churlish way - to get her hairy butt back in the house and shut her pie hole. Ah, what I would give for a bark that were so easily stopped!

My dogs have never had it so good. We took the dogs to the dog park yesterday to get out some of Dottie's electrified energy, and it seemed to have some effect as she was quiet all night, which actually surprised me greatly. So this morning we went again! The dogs are stoked to have Dottie as a guest as it seems to mean that everyone gets great things to chew on and daily trips to the dog park. YAY!

Yesterday evening I very nearly implored Marv to save himself and stay home, but trooper that he is, he opted to take his chances. I, not being so trusting, made him promise that if he didn't sleep all night due to this decision, he forfeited his right to be a pain in the ass because he was exhausted. He promised. We shook on it. And then we went to Walmart and stocked up on chewing apparatus (for the dogs.) (Is that apparati?)

I was prepared to let Dottie chew on a live cow if it would make her stop her incessant whining and barking. And, by God, it worked! She didn't start barking again until Marv came downstairs this morning.

I came home for lunch and came and left to the sounds of whining and barking though. And tonight it's been an entertaining evening of watching Nikki eyeballing the crate full of chewables and Dottie guarding them. Dottie wants to take the items out of the crate - no doubt to parade around in front of Nikki and Gypsy, but she has had to learn the hard truth that she can go in the crate and she can come out of the crate. But the treats stay locked up. Gypsy, like Dottie, gets snappish and crabby when treats are on the line, so there are NO treats outside of crates.

At night we're "locked down" now. Nikki in a crate, Dottie in a crate, and Gypsy is in the Big House. In other words, there's a gate stopping her from going in the kitchen or downstairs, and a gate stopping her from going down the hallway upstairs and to the bedrooms, but she has the livingroom and dining room to herself. Three cats were locked in the "cat rooms" upstairs, and poor Basil was wandering the house - wherever he goes at night

Well, one day down, and only nine more to go!