Cheyenne's Pages

The Cheyenne Story - part 7 - Life with a Dog:

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     It's a big adjustment, having a dog. Not as big an adjustment as having kids, I imagine, but it does shake your life up. Gone were the days when I would get home from work, take off my shoes and spend an entire evening in front of the TV, never leaving the house. I don't know if it was because she was just trying to feel us out as new owners, but for the first couple weeks, it seemed she wanted to go out every twenty minutes! To her credit, she did something every time we went, even if it was only a little tinkle, but every twenty minutes? We mentioned this to a friend who had done a stint as a dog walker for hire, and she said that it was Cheyenne's way of "controlling" us, and that we shouldn't go every time she wanted to. We tried her advice, telling Cheyenne to wait, that she had just gone out. After about ten minutes of trying to get us to take her out, she relieved herself right there on the floor. Maybe she did have to go out every twenty minutes!

     But that went away after a couple weeks, and we were on a regular routine. We got to know the neighborhood pretty well that winter and spring, and we got to know dog ownership pretty well, as well. Our landlord lived right next door, and they had Grizelda, so they gave us quite a few tips, including the famous Poopie Paper Trick We also found out that Grizelda did not like other dogs on "her" property, so we had to make sure that she was not out when we were going out.

     Not that Cheyenne got along well with others. We quickly found out that she was not too fond of most other dogs, she REALLY didn't like kids, and there were some adults she didn't take too kindly to, for reasons we never did know. We figure that she must have been somewhat abused in her previous home, possibly by kids, but she never snapped at us, so we just had to be extra vigilant when we were out walking. But when she was with us, she was the sweetest, most docile dog I've ever seen.

     Of course, even the sweetest dogs have been known to so some silly things, just as some new dog owners do some silly things as well. The silliest thing, which was actually one of the stupidest things I ever did, happened in the spring of the following year.

     When I moved in with Stephanie, I only moved about six blocks away from the home I grew up in. Just before we got Cheyenne, my parents moved out of the neighborhood, and the following spring they were selling the house. I had a room in the attic, and when I moved out I left some stuff up there, and one day while we were out on our walk, we thought we'd go see what was left in the attic. So Stephanie, Cheyenne and I went over to the folks' house, went up into the attic, and started to look around.

     We were picking around in the stuff I had left, when I got the brilliant idea of opening the attic window. We never replaced the windows when we remodeled the attic to create my bedroom, so they were the old style attic windows that were about knee-high and swung inward. And since I usually had an air conditioner in there from the beginning of spring to the end of fall, the window didn't have a screen on the outside. I had to open the window and set the screen in from the inside.

     Well, I opened the window and turned away to grab the screen, and Cheyenne jumped out! To this day, my memory of the whole thing is a blur. I remember seeing her go through the window and land, sitting, on the maybe foot-and-a-half of roof below the window, two stories above the sidewalk in the yard. I somehow stuck my head and shoulders through the window, grabbed her around the waist, hauled her back in and slammed the window. I then turned and saw Stephanie, standing there with her mouth wide open. I could feel my heart racing, as I looked down at Cheyenne, she had that "What?" expression on her face. We left the attic immediately, and never took her back up there again.

     But even through life-threatening situations, Cheyenne seemed to take everything in stride. She loved living with us, she loved going places in the car, and she especially loved going to my parent's new house. You know how Grandma's spoil their grand-dogs!

On to part 8 -->

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