The Anti Dog Terrorism Conference

Bear

Hannah

Sam

These were once my pets, I say “once” because they are all in heaven now, but yet still in my heart.  I’ve already told you about Bear and Sam.  Hannah came into our lives  on an ATV.  One of the boys in our Boy Scout troop brought her to me.  He had found her abandoned when he was on vacation and thought I might like her.  She rode in a boat, then in a car several hours and then inside his shirt as he drove his ATV to bring her to me.

Well Sam and Hannah soon became as thick as thieves.  Hannah was beautiful and she knew it.  Humans could touch her only if she approved.  She loved wearing outfits (she’d start purring when I put them on her and get upset when I took them off) and if I ever had flowers in the house, she’d make a beeline to smell them.  Hannah was an aloof girly girl, Sam was more laid back.  His favorite activity was sleeping on books.  But they both loved the humans in our house, and  they both had a love/hate relationship with Bear.

Like most dogs, Bear loved it when we gave him bones.  He had this little game he’d play.  He would hold the bone between his paws, maybe chew on it from time to time, but when the cats got close he’d growl savagely at them.  Well, Sam was an incredibly intelligent cat and of course he didn’t much like being growled at.  So it was like Sam and Hannah had an Anti Dog Terrorism Conference and they developed a strategy.

The next time Bear got a bone, he chewed on it and then I saw his eyes searching for the cats.  But the cats were busy bathing themselves, eating, napping, everything but coming close to Bear and his prized bone.  But Bear was a patient Labrador retriever who could write a book about patience and so he waited and waited and waited.  I was busy homeschooling and keeping up with my household tasks and during one trip through the room where Bear had been waiting so long, I saw the bone, unattended.  I could not believe it.  It sat as tantalizing as a bone can sit on the center of the rug that was in front of our wood-burning stove.  I could not believe Bear would  so neglect that beloved bone.  I thought maybe I saw catnip sprinkled on that bone, but it could have been my imagination.

And that’s when I saw Bear.  We had another room off the room where the wood-burning stove was and Bear lay crouched on the floor in that room, hiding behind a door, his eyes never wavering, even for a second,  from his beloved bone in the adjoining room. Unsupervised? Unattended? Hardly.  Bear was just hoping those cats would waltz by and get close to his bone so he could growl his fierce growl and let those cats know who was really the boss in the house.

But the cats had this tactic considered in their Anti Dog Terrorism Conference and they had a tactic of their own:  they would not negotiate with terrorists, much less look at the big brown one who lived in our house.  In all this time, Bear didn’t eat, drink or even enjoy the bone he was trying so hard to protect.  But even the best-intentioned dogs have to abandon their posts to go to bathroom and Bear was too well trained to even think about not going outside for nature’s call.  So he sighed, walked over to the bone, picked it up and scratched on the front door, telling me he wanted out.

To this day, I do not know the final resting place of the beloved bone.  Perhaps it is close to the spot where we had to bury Bear’s remains after he saved our lives from an electrical fire.  Sam and Hannah went into mourning with the humans in the house when Bear died.  Perhaps they felt a little guilty for the way they had outwitted him, but I doubt it.