Since Ivy joined our family, I have new skills.
Here is a short list of these skills:
- Strictly Come Dancing participant: waltzing around the house with one shoe or one slipper on, avoiding soggy puppy toys covered in twigs
- Olympic outdoor obstacle course entrant: walking around the garden with one sock on (with bite marks and holes) and a black mop of fur attached to my bare foot
- Home economics student: sweeping the wooden floors with (again) a black mop of fur attached to the broom bristles
- Self-defense pupil: being repeatedly bitten while sitting on the couch, which includes reading a magazine with the corners eaten
- Helicopter parent: hovering around doggy day care boasting about the black mop and trying to elicit reports of good behaviour
- Horticulture enthusiast: finding a slipper in the garden, buried under soil and holding-up a tortoise who is about to fall into a hound-made moat
- Cordon bleu chef: steaming broccoli (my only culinary skill involving a pot) while holding onto the black mop so that I get a few minutes of time when she is not attached to the bottom of my pyjama pants
- Hairdressing 101 victim: being woken-up on the couch with my fringe being tugged and slobbered on
- Undercover agent: stealthily taking the red Burmese from the ground floor at home to the top floor, without the black mop spotting us
- Infrared optician: reading in bed in the dark, so that I do not wake-up the black mop who has finally fallen asleep
- Multi-task packer: packing Ivy’s going-out bag with one hand while holding the black mop in my arm (lactic acid included)
- Multi-task driver: driving with one hand, including changing gears, while tickling the black mop on the back seat (in her Wag World car hammock)
- Beach bum and agony aunt: Sunday beach walks with Ivy where we get stopped by strange people wanting to know about her and then they launch into their own stories of dogs, the beach, the sea, the weather, children etc (the list goes on).
All in all, I can say that I am a better human from this. Ivy has been with us for 4 weeks. She has grown in size, is bold and can climb stairs. Ivy is slowly acknowledging that there are other dogs in the world and that at doggy day care, she will have to interact with these other dogs.
She is our very own Hurricane Ivy. Sunshine, chaos and delight all in one mop of black curly fur. Our world is richer with her.
