mistaken identity

Okay, I admit it. Sometimes when we are expecting a repair guy at the house, I put Baxter out on the deck. Yeah, yeah I could do the right thing and work on the whole stranger barky thing, but not everyone who comes to our house has the time to put up with all that fuss or noise, especially repair guys. Before the doorbell rings, before the service guy even drives up on our driveway, out on the deck our little watchdog goes to smell the roses and bark at the squirrels, blissfully unaware of all the commotion inside. At least, that was my thinking.

My ploy worked a whopping total of two times before tiny chumley caught on to my ways, sensing and smelling that something was different when he was finally let back inside. Chumley would run about the house, nose in the air and barking at every turn with tiny menacing hackles raised, in search of He Who Must Be Barked At. Only to find nothing, much to his dismay. But SOMETHING, he knew, was up and he missed out. So, when he remembers, tiny chumley knows to be a tad suspicious when he is left on the deck alone.

Yesterday, tiny chumley followed me out on the deck to shake out a rug and he decided to linger, rejecting my calls to come back inside, choosing instead to soak in the sun and roast his piglety body an even darker shade of brown on the baking stone that is our deck. Fine, I figured, he can be stubborn by himself while I take care of some things in the kitchen.

By the time both our wills caved in and we met at the door, me ready to let him in, and he ready to be let in, tiny chumley forgot how he ended up on the deck in the first place, and spied what he thought was a shadowy figure inside. "Whoa," he paused to think, "Who DAT? The guy I never get to meet??" From the safety of the deck he barked, til he finally realized he was barking at his dad.

"Oopsie. Silly me. We're all friends here, right? Wanna let me inside now?" And chumley happily trotted in, radiating heat like a bun fresh from the oven, as if nothing ever happened at all.