I tend to personify my pets. One day, my dog, a Belgian Malinois named Poco, short for Pochahontas, stepped partway into my little home office and stopped. At first, I was too absorbed in drinking my stale coffee and staring into the abyss of the internet to notice. After a moment, I heard her breathing, and I swiveled around in my broken office chair that had sunk to its lowest setting. When my swiveling stopped, I futilely jacked my seat back up to its starting point, trying to ignore its slow descent until I found myself at eye level with her anyway. I waited momentarily, leaning forward to make sense of the debris she’d laid before her for me to inspect. I took a sip of coffee, then asked, “What’s up, pup?”

She glanced in my direction, then at the wall past my left shoulder. After a short wag and one of her nervous dog yawns, she said, “You know those shoes of yours that you are always complaining are killing you?” She looked pleased with herself as I stared at her profile. I blinked a few times, picturing the shoe shelf in my closet. “You mean the taupe slingbacks or the black pumps?” I asked. She looked away in frustration. She hates it when I answer a question with a question. 

“Both,” she curtly replied as she blew some air through her nose like a sneeze.I pulled my chin in slightly, and narrowed my eyes, and said concernedly, “Yeeaaah?” Not sure where this was going I added, “What about them?”

I was sure she was going to say something snarky about coffee breath, but she didn’t. Instead, she said, “They won’t be bothering you anymore. I took care of all four of them this morning.” She turned to find an astonished look on my face and said, with a tone, “What?”

“I’m stunned” I stuttered. “Why,” she replied, “because I’m a dog who talks or that I chewed up two pairs of shoes that smell like feet. I’m a dog.”

“Both,” I explained. She shook her ears briefly and finally answered, “ANYway, your closet smells better now. ” She sat back on her haunches and then stepped her paws forward until she rested on her elbows and crossed her front paws. As she absently sniffed at the carpet around her front paws, she added, “You’ll find the parts in that room where you used to do yoga. You know, the one that now looks more like a garage.” She stood up then and turned to leave the room. As she was walking out the door, I asked, “Where are you going now?” 

Tail held high she stopped and looked back over her shoulder at me, “Well, someone has to get something done around here. I just passed the laundry baskets and saw some underwear with the crotches still intact, and I noticed a ton of balled-up tissue hold-up in those cans you call trash. Love those.” She walked out then and as she took the stairs, she finished her thought. “I’ll start upstairs!”

I stared after her, my only thoughts were of my favorite shoes, gone forever. After a moment I heard her call from the 2nd-floor landing, “And don’t forget, you need new pillows. I knocked the stuffing out of those a month ago and you’ve yet to replace them.…hate those damn chicken feathers sticking out in all directions and scratching my face.…” I heard her mumble as she trotted away down the upper hallway towards the laundry baskets still grumbling to herself.“

I swiveled back around then to my desk and looked up at my computer, now hovering high over my head again. “Okaaay….well that’s what I get for rescuing a dog from Cape Girardeau, Missouri,” I said to no one as I swiveled my chair back in place and I pressed the lever to pull my seat back to its highest position.