One More Week

This time next week we’ll be inflating an air mattress and preparing to sleep in our new house for the first time. Maybe we’ll light a fire in our fireplace; maybe we’ll walk the trails in the woods before it gets dark. We will walk from room to room, running our hands along the walls, pointing out where the furniture will go, deciding what color to paint the walls, and where to hang the pictures.

We’ll spend this week finishing up the last of the packing and doing things like having the mail forwarded, and making sure the electric, phone and cable will be turned on at the new place.

We’ve been talking about how well the dogs will catch on to living in a new house. Both dogs have lived their entire lives in our old house. They have their favorite sunny spots to lie down in; they smell the familiar smells outside the house. They even know when we’re coming home when we’re coming back from a long trip. They know the pattern of pulling off the exit, going through four traffic lights, turning right at the Walgreens, the left turn onto our street, then the right into our driveway.

Next Friday the boys will be moving into a house where three un-spayed/un-neutered dogs lived. When we first looked at the house the female had given birth to a litter of 10 puppies. Then a few weeks ago when we did a walk-through at the house, the female was pregnant again. I am hoping that in the next week she won’t give birth, and funk up the house again. But the house definitely smells like three dogs lived there to my people nose; imagine how it will smell to my dogs and their very sensitive noses.

Todd says, “Don’t be surprised if Griffen and Nemo pee in the new house.”

“But I don’t want them to pee in my new house, and heads are gonna roll if they pee on a spot that I just cleaned.”

“It’s gonna happen, Beej. And you can’t get mad at them for it. They need to mark their territory.”

“But, we spent all that time housebreaking them!”

“I know, but the smell of those other dogs is going to make them nuts.”

So, while I am busy fondling my new walls, caressing my new fireplace, rolling around on my hardwood floors, and turning circles in the backyard—a la Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music—my dogs will be peeing. In my house. Against the walls I just fondled, the fireplace I just caressed, and on my hardwood floors.

Hopefully they’ll do it after I roll around on the floors.