The dog's ears casually rise to attention as I move through the house.
She furtively glances my way without shifting from her place in the sunny patch of the rug.
She follows me with her eyes through the kitchen, to the living room, into the bedroom, and back. She listens as I close a cabinet and open the refrigerator. She yawns and stretches as I pace the floor.
Just as she has me trained to be quiet while I gather up the things that might send her into a tizzy, I have trained her -- by poor follow-through -- to have low expectations despite all indications point to a sure thing.
The leash.
Some running shoes.
An overripe bag of kitchen trash.
All of these things, in the past, have meant an opportunity for great fun: A low-key tour of the block maybe, or perhaps a three-mile jog; even an informal bounce or two around the garbage cans in the backyard. Of course, these things I am gathering could mean nothing: a tidying, a false alarm, an abandonment of sorts.
But now the whole world has changed, and she's not the only one who is unsure if it's for the better.
The car keys haven't left their hook in a while. The leash sits all in a tangle in a basket by the door. It seems as useful as any necktie right about now.
She scoots out with me for a run. We just go to the back yard, where I can clock a mile in five laps of the property. No matter how many times I circle, she's given up within the first four. She'll sit in the middle of the grass and watch me circle.
I go off course long enough to let her back into the house, where she can keep pace with the ones logging on to their virtual classrooms.
With her humans always around, she has fewer places just to lay by herself, a pursuit she apparently had mastered during the day when we had gone to work.
Now she's always on the job.
The sunny spots are all occupied by others. And, more alarmingly, there are so many dis-embodied voices traveling through a seemingly endless number of different-sized screens, it's hard to know if there's a need to bark at an intruder or bark because they're just not petting her.
One dog barks in the background on Zoom, and the whole dilemma starts again. Did her people get another dog? Does it live in that metal clamshell thing they keep tap, tap, tapping on?
These are the questions I've imagined pulsing through her canine thoughts before she abandons them to bark at a squirrel that's brazen enough to scurry past the window.
The last remaining annoyance that hasn't turned itself inside out.
Her humans are all over the place when they haven't sequestered in their separate corners.
Doors slam. Voices get angry. They get sad. They go silent. But there is laughter, too. And it can be cleansing and healing as it rolls over all of the rough patches.
Like a hand, rubbing her belly or scratching behind her ears or whenever she wants.
She furtively glances my way without shifting from her place in the sunny patch of the rug.
She follows me with her eyes through the kitchen, to the living room, into the bedroom, and back. She listens as I close a cabinet and open the refrigerator. She yawns and stretches as I pace the floor.
Just as she has me trained to be quiet while I gather up the things that might send her into a tizzy, I have trained her -- by poor follow-through -- to have low expectations despite all indications point to a sure thing.
The leash.
Some running shoes.
An overripe bag of kitchen trash.
All of these things, in the past, have meant an opportunity for great fun: A low-key tour of the block maybe, or perhaps a three-mile jog; even an informal bounce or two around the garbage cans in the backyard. Of course, these things I am gathering could mean nothing: a tidying, a false alarm, an abandonment of sorts.
But now the whole world has changed, and she's not the only one who is unsure if it's for the better.
The car keys haven't left their hook in a while. The leash sits all in a tangle in a basket by the door. It seems as useful as any necktie right about now.
She scoots out with me for a run. We just go to the back yard, where I can clock a mile in five laps of the property. No matter how many times I circle, she's given up within the first four. She'll sit in the middle of the grass and watch me circle.
I go off course long enough to let her back into the house, where she can keep pace with the ones logging on to their virtual classrooms.
With her humans always around, she has fewer places just to lay by herself, a pursuit she apparently had mastered during the day when we had gone to work.
Now she's always on the job.
The sunny spots are all occupied by others. And, more alarmingly, there are so many dis-embodied voices traveling through a seemingly endless number of different-sized screens, it's hard to know if there's a need to bark at an intruder or bark because they're just not petting her.
One dog barks in the background on Zoom, and the whole dilemma starts again. Did her people get another dog? Does it live in that metal clamshell thing they keep tap, tap, tapping on?
These are the questions I've imagined pulsing through her canine thoughts before she abandons them to bark at a squirrel that's brazen enough to scurry past the window.
The last remaining annoyance that hasn't turned itself inside out.
Her humans are all over the place when they haven't sequestered in their separate corners.
Doors slam. Voices get angry. They get sad. They go silent. But there is laughter, too. And it can be cleansing and healing as it rolls over all of the rough patches.
Like a hand, rubbing her belly or scratching behind her ears or whenever she wants.