I miss Arthur

I miss Arthur. We dropped him off at Anna’s when we passed through Columbus on our way to Buffalo Saturday. We aren’t going to pick him up until next Wednesday because we have a little more traveling to do and it takes him awhile to adjust to being ditched. Even if he is being ditched at one of his favorite people’s apartment. Anna said he shook for a while, wouldn’t eat unless she hand-fed him and cried every time she changed her clothes because he thought she was going to leave. Mark thinks he’s a bit insecure. I prefer to think of him as attached, affectionate and devoted.

Mark also thinks he’s a nuisance. And I admit that we have had a struggle getting him to do his toileting outside consistently. But to be honest, if it was raining, or snowing, or cold, or just dark and scary, I probably wouldn’t want to go outside either, although I probably wouldn’t choose to use the foyer rug.

And I mean, honestly, can you blame him? Look what happens when he has to tromp around in the snow.

What really annoys Mark is when he pulls himself out of his recliner to let Arthur out onto the deck from the great room and then Arthur just runs around the house to the kitchen door where he waits for his reward of a small piece of diced chicken for “pottying outside.” I don’t think he fully understands what the reward is actually for.

“Well, don’t give him the chicken if he doesn’t go potty,” I say in response to Mark’s fuming and venting.

“He’s a nuisance,” Mark says.

“He’s a companion dog,” I reply.

We confine him to the kitchen when we have to leave him home alone. He hears the garage door when we return and runs to look out the door. From the car, we see his little face pop up in the window and then dash away once he sees who it is and runs for the garage door.

I miss his little face.

When we first got him in February of ’09 he was just a little fur ball.

We lived in a different house then and blocked him in the kitchen and family room area by placing two small crates in the hallway that he couldn’t get over until two of our sons taught him how. He was so attached to me that if I walked over the crates to leave the room he would stand at them and cry until I came back.

He’s a companion dog. How could I ever leave him?

If ever I would leave him, it wouldn’t be in summer.
Seeing him in summer I never would go.

His hair streaked with sun-light,
Racing for the ball

Burying bones in bushes
We won’t find til fall.
But if I’d ever leave him, it couldn’t be in autumn.
How I’d leave in autumn I never will know.

I’ve seen how he sparkles
When fall nips the air.

I know him in autumn
And I must be there.

And could I leave him
running merrily through the snow?

Or on a wintry evening
when he catches the fire’s glow?

If ever I would leave him,
How could it be in spring-time?

Knowing how in spring I’m bewitched by him so?
Oh, no, not in spring-time,
Summer, winter or fall.
No, never could I leave him at all.