October 17, 2018

I don’t know what to think of the fact that we’ve turned into one of those couples. You know the kind I mean. Their kids are all well and truly grown up, moved out, and off on their own leading exciting and busy lives. We—the older generation—are at home, alone, reportedly retired and in our September years. They probably would have been golden years if we’d done a better job of saving while we were working and raising our kids, but that’s another story.

So, as I said, one of those couples who no longer has children underfoot, whose grandchildren are also all off leading exciting and busy lives…and here we are, at home, just us…and the dog.

Our fur baby. And what do we do? Do I tell Mr. Tuffy to go and see David if he wants something? Does David tell Tuffy to go and see Morgan? No, of course not. Because he’s the baby, right? That means, he is told to think of us as mommy and daddy.

About the only point to our credit is we do not talk “baby talk” to him. Well, there might be a bit of a sing-song inflection in my voice when I tell him he’s so cute I just can’t stand it—but that’s the only time, I swear.

Thinking about it now, I wonder if it would have been better, right from the get-go, if we had referred to ourselves as grandma and grandpa? Or maybe, her/his majesty? Because I have to tell you, establishing ourselves as the “parents” of this little seven-pound, too cute for words Morkie of ours means that we are going through the whole child-rearing thing, all over again.

Complete with cheeky back-talk and a few nights of interrupted sleep when the baby is restless.

On the plus side, he doesn’t ask for money and hasn’t yet demanded the keys to the car. He might some day ask for those keys and then hide them, so I can’t find them, and we can’t, therefore, go somewhere and leave him alone, possibly never to return again leaving him to eventually starve to death! But that, too, is another story.

Of course, once you start this charade of referring to yourselves to the dog the way we have, there really is no going back. I’m his mommy, David is his daddy, and our daughter, Jenny, is therefore, his sister. He knows us by those names, too. The fact that Morkies tend to be devoted to their families is part of the mix. We are the only three people he loves absolutely. He’s happy when either of my two closest grandchildren, Emma and Gavin, come to visit. He gets excited and wants to be picked up and takes the time to sniff their clothes to see where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing.

New people occasionally come to the house, but he doesn’t want anything to do with them. He doesn’t bark at them, he just stays away from them. It took our son (Mr. Tuffy’s brother) about four times visiting after we got the dog for the dog to allow him close and tolerate being picked up. I think he’d be like that with others, too, if they visited more often. My brother and his wife don’t come over often enough to make any kind of impression on him, so it’s no, thanks. I’ll just stay with my daddy. He is absolutely the happiest when our daughter is here, so he has all of his humans present and accounted for.

We love the little rascal, of course, even if occasionally we wish he’d be a little less vocal—a little less diligent in his job as “Tuffy on Guard” as he feels he must alert us to every passing human (with or without a canine) as well as every squirrel that dares to venture close.

He’s the first small dog we’ve ever had, and there are marked differences between him and our previous large hounds. For one, he really is a lap dog, and having him on me isn’t cumbersome at all. Being the breed that he is, he doesn’t shed. The last dog we had—and the last cat, too—were fur shedding machines. One had to vacuum daily to keep up with the fur. I don’t miss that. He also sleeps a lot more than the bigger dogs ever did, and he’s easier to exercise. Heck, sometimes he just has to run for the pure joy of running, and runs laps from the living room, to my office, into the kitchen, around the table and back again.

Mr. Tuffy, being the baby, is spoiled. This house has three actual puppy beds in it. One is in the office, on the floor beside me, and has a towel for a blanket and several bones in it. Being creative, we call that the bone bed. There’s another with a towel for a blanket on the spare chair in the living room. That’s his television chair. There’s a third one, with no towel, that we keep on a bottom shelf of a shelving unit we have in our entrance hallway. There’s only about a foot and a half between the shelf the bed is on and the one above it, and we call that his “little house”.

Of course, when it’s bed time, it isn’t to any of these luxurious beds that he goes to. No, when it’s bed time he stands stoically waiting for his daddy to pick him up so that he can then carry him into our bedroom and the big, high bed (so high he can’t jump onto it). Yes, he sleeps on our bed, every night. He’s a restless little sleeper, too, finding his place on top of the blankets—sometimes wanting to be close to daddy, sometimes mommy, sometimes at the foot of the bed, sometimes by our pillows—and sometimes exactly between us and under the blankets.

Awakening at night, I know the males in the family are sleeping well and soundly when I see them both on their backs, snoring away.

In case you had any doubt at all, I will tell you that is, truly, how I like them both best.

Love,
Morgan
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