For the Love of Dogs

Anyone who knows me well, probably knows by now that I'm a huge dog lover. Our family have always had dogs, and I'm used to having them in the house. There isn't enough space or time down in Glasgow to have a dog running around, so it's nice when I come home to my mum's house and get to see our lovely mutt. 

There's generally a routine that everything falls into when I come home after being away for a while. I arrive and our dog, Storm, goes absolutely mad. She gets really hyper, she's happy to see me, cuddles into my legs and it's all very cute. But then it wears off. She gets more used to me being here and stops caring. And then we hit the wall.

That day was today.

Our big, tough, super-scary-but-not-really, Doberman has an irrational fear of the hoover. She absolutely hates it. As soon as you take it out she starts shaking uncontrollably and runs off with her tail between her legs either to her bed or up the stairs where the hoover can't get to her apparently. So this afternoon when I took the hoover out, the usually thing happened. Storm scarpered out of the living room and legged it to the kitchen. I didn't take any heed of it, since she always does that.

But then I finished hoovering. I put the hoover away, walked through to the kitchen and it looked like Christmas had come early. I had stupidly left the toilet roll that I had bought on the kitchen counter and it seems that as revenge for me taking the hoover out, Storm had determined that the toilet roll had to die. She had completely shredded four rolls of toilet roll and they littered the ground around her bed and inside her bed itself. And all she did was look at me. It was like she was saying: "This is all your fault, I don't know why you're mad at me."

We had words, and now she's curled up in her bed facing the wall, not talking to me.

While I was pretty mad before and especially mad while I was cleaning up her little Winter Wonderland, I've realised that it was all quite funny. She can be an absolute pain but I'm glad we have her. Storm loves us all unconditionally, and I think that my love of dogs boils down to that alone. I have a really good picture to show you what I mean.

This is our front garden, and that's Storm sitting at the wall. It's what she did when my stepdad went off to work, and she does it sometimes when my little sister goes off to school. She sits and waits, hoping that they'll come back soon.

So I've forgiven her for the toilet roll, for now. But if she touches my shoes one more time, we may have to have a little talk...