I was wrong. This post isn’t about Elli. I’ll tell you about Elli when she’s here. There’s a preview up there in the header bar somewhere. ^ This post is about getting ready for Elli and arctic mornings.
Today is an arctic morning. The sun is peeking over the horizon in those winter wash pastel shades of blue and orange. And it’s cold. I’m waiting for glimpse of moose, wolf, or maybe even evergreen trees through the window beside me. All people in the Yukon scoff at my idea of cold. But sometimes, it’s just too damn cold to care about people in the Yukon. I will be gone all day. I’m driving far away to a meeting I was looking forward to before my worn out car and the too damn cold ruined it all. I’m still going, long story–but now I’ll have to drive for hours to miss most of it. Hours and hours and hours of driving in the too damn cold. With no dogs. My dogs want me take them out now. …in the too damn cold.
One of the things I would be doing if I weren’t driving today would be to rearrange the front room. Time to re-install the puppy pen. Which brings me to a logistical problem. Mesa’s crate is now located in the traditional, near people but out of traffic, only spot with no chair or bookcase, puppy pen spot. I’m not sure where Mesa’s crate was when Joe was a puppy. But it won’t work anymore because now she’s trained to run in her crate when there is a tense moment at the front door (visitor, dog entering, etc). This trick is our main line of defense against those no-shut-up-I-get-to-guard-them! fights between the girls. She just runs there without thinking but she can still “guard” us all and see what’s going on. -Kai runs back and stands on the couch. Joe runs up to the door with a toy in his mouth (to shut up the Sheltie bark!) and does the welcoming hula dance.- Ok. So, where do I put the puppy pen? Where do I put Mesa’s haven? I could always move the couch across the front door. Then there’d be no problem… plenty of space, no visitors, no leaving. Now that all the holiday visiting is done, I have four days to get it right, make the family happy, and puppy proof the house. There’s gotta be some order when a puppy hits this fan.
