The Oddest Thing

Backfill: March 24 The oddest thing happened this morning. I was upstairs getting dressed to go for our usual morning walk, and the dogs were helping. For Casey, this usually means singing as loudly as he can and wagging his tail; for Jake, this involves sweeping back and forth around my ankles, looking extremely happy and emitting occasional woofs in exchange for a good rub on the back; for Tika, this involves leaping on and off the bed with Rope or Snake, giving it overwhelmingly over-the-top shakes, dropping it off the bed for me to pick up, and playing ferocious tug-of-war with me.

So all of a sudden I turned around and Tika had stopped her frenzy and was standing in the oddest way, sort of half sitting, with the oddest expression on her face. I started towards her to see what was up, and it wasn't until she started to move again that I realized that she had just peed quite thouroughly onto my carpet.

I was so startled that I didn't say anything specifically to her; just shouting something generally disturbed into the atmosphere and raced downstairs to get the appropriate clean-up implements.

I can't remember Tika ever doing her thing inside the house, even when I first got her. Not ever. I worried all morning over whether she might be ill in some odd way.

Then, later, I wondered about something that I had previously wondered about (although less intensely): Seems that, as the morning wears on, she pesters me more and more about paying attention to it being Walkies Time and less and less time out in the yard, so that when we actually go for a walk, after we get off our little street, the first thing she has to do is pee. So I've been thinking that she's just not bothering to go out into the yard but is instead holding on because she knows we'll be going for a walk soon.

And, on this particular morning, I was at least an hour, maybe 2 hours later than we usually go walking.