Rubik’s Cube With Dogs
You remember the Rubik’s Cube, don’t you? A cube with tiny squares colored six different ways. You twist it up and down and all around until all the squares on each side match.
It took me months to solve it the first time. After more practice I got good. Then I got bored.
Now I’m facing a bigger mental challenge – how to match four dogs in four different rooms without them getting in a huge dog fight..
Normally our three dogs and my daughter’s dog Chloe get along famously. There’s Duncan the Border Collie, the Shih-tzu named General Tso, our eleven-month-old Collie puppy Havoc who’s over sixty-five pounds and still has some growing left in him, and our daughter’s dog Chloe who is some kind of Poodle-schnauzer mix.
Everyone likes Chloe’s food because it’s salty. Eight years ago she was rushed to Dog Emergency room with bladder stones the size of marshmallows. And I’m not talking about those little marshmallows you float in hot chocolate. I’m thinking of that big guy who terrorized New York in the first Ghostbusters movie. Her bladder stones, incredibly huge, were removed in emergency surgery, and she now has to eat this special salty dog food which makes her drink lots of water to dissolve the bladder stones before they get started again.
Havoc gets some kind of puppy food. The other two get regular dog kibble. Every dog wants what the others got.
So here’s what happens. Chloe gets dumped in our bedroom around 5:15 in the morning when my daughter heads off to work. She’s a teacher – my daughter, not her dog. Then I get up around 7:00 to send Chloe out the door in the back, then bring Duncan and the General upstairs and send them out too.
A minute later the latter two will have finished taking care of the essentials and are anxious to come in and eat. General Tso eats in the upstairs bathroom with both doors shut tight because he’s the worst thief. He’s got an orthopedic dog food bowl which looks like a maze so he eats slowly enough he doesn’t choke.
Duncan is put in my home writing office with his food. I then go back downstairs bring up Havoc, and start him on his breakfast, which he may or may not eat. I also break an egg into a black skillet.
By this time Chloe is finally ready to come back in. For her taking care of essential business really is rocket science. I then send Havoc out for his first walk. Chloe goes downstairs to her owner’s bedroom where her food is waiting. I rush over to the stove and flip the egg.
By this time Duncan and the General have finished eating and want to go back outside. I coax Havoc back inside with a liver treat, send the Dynamic Duo outside, and put Havoc’s egg on a paper plate next to his food bowl. Havoc doesn’t like his food to touch.
Just so you know, I reuse that paper plate several times.
While he’s eating I open the backdoor, shoo Duncan and General Tso downstairs, at which point Havoc tells me he doesn’t like eggs anymore and I send him back outside again.
About this time I look around. Four dogs, four breakfasts, no fights. I sigh, crack three eggs into the pan for me, break a piece of sourdough bread in half and stick both halves in the toaster, peel a banana, and take a deep breath.
Mission accomplished.
Frank Ramirez is the Senior Pastor of the Union Center Church of the Brethren.