Cone-head the Dog

At first it was a funny joke. Our six-month-old puppy, Toast, went in for surgery 10 days ago to be spayed. The vet tied this funny-looking plastic cone around her head to keep her from reaching back and biting out the stitches from her wound. Unlike our last dog, Penny, Toast didn’t seem to mind wearing the cone at all. So we thought, either she’s pretty dense, or laid back. We chose to think: “laid-back.” So we joked around with her and stared to call her “Cone-head.” All in good fun, of course. She didn’t seem to mind her new nick-name at all. But as each of the 10 days of “healing time” passed, with minimal exercise each day, she got feistier and feistier.

This morning it wasn’t funny anymore. (Well, maybe it little.)

Our daughter, who was up visiting us this weekend with her boyfriend, came running into our home office with a sick look on her face. She held up her boyfriend’s cell phone and said, “Toast just ate Jeff’s phone!”

Great. I pictured in my mind the both of them traveling back to Chicago, having to turn the dog over on her belly to punch in a phone number whenever Jeff wanted to call someone… and then cuddling up to the dog’s mouth to be able to shout down her throat so that the little microphone could pick up his voice.

Maybe every dog goes through this stage early on. Just to test you, to see how much you’re really willing to sacrifice to let this dog live with you. Our last dog did the same thing. It was when a good friend of ours came to visit. (It always happens when guests come to visit.) Marcia came upstairs in her bathrobe for coffee and breakfast. As we were laughing and talking Penny suddenly appeared, looking a little sheepish, and came up to Marcia to be petted. “What do you have in your mouth?” she asked sweetly… innocently, as she gently reached down to pet her and remove it from her mouth. Her face turned from smiles to frowns when she realized that she was holding what was left of her prescription glasses. Merlajean and I both looked for a hole in the floor to jump into.

That visit cost us $150 bucks for a new pair of glasses and almost a friendship. I have no idea how much this visit from our daughter and her boyfriend will cost us for a new cell phone. The ironic thing is, of course, Toast tries to spend every waking moment next to Jeff's side. I can’t tell if Toast is simply infatuated with her newfound friend from Chicago, or if she's just rubbing it in because she just got by with chewing up his phone and everyone thinks “she’s just a dumb dog!”