Beastly Rugs

The dogs turned three on July 2nd and have been enjoying a few extra freedoms now that they are older and wiser (and slowly becoming the rag rugs they are destined to be).  I used to keep an eye on them, and as I moved from room to room, I would call them to follow me.  Recently I've been letting them roam more and they don't always follow me up the stairs.  If it gets deathly quiet I'll check on them, but mostly they've been doing their own thing.

But they are very quiet dogs.  Occasionally I'll be engrossed in work and look up to discover they've just magically appeared.  Somehow all their thundering up the stairs has turned into clouds softly floating their way up.  I do most of my work upstairs so that's where I spend most of my time when I'm not at the library.  

My workout room is also upstairs and I workout almost every day.  Every couple of days I'll be laying on the floor doing the dead bug or lifting weights, something evil like that, and without a single sound, a golden retriever body will be hovering over me all goofy face and wagging butt. "Hello! Hello down there! Good to see you!"

 Then, ever so gently, they flop down next to me and become a rug again. 

I've gone from corpse to holy shitballs in less than a second, but now I try not to close my eyes (or fall asleep while working out. I work out like a beast.)  They know better than to lay on me in any way or get in the way of the weights.  They just simply appear and get as close to me as they think they can get away with.  And then they flop.  Occasionally I'm treated to faces imploring me to do something, anything with them.  And about once a week they try to entice me with a soggy toy.

Our favorite thing to do, besides going for walks, is sitting on the front porch and disappearing.  Truly!  We're incredibly good at it too.

When I'm engrossed in whatever I'm doing I go very still.  I sometimes go so still I forget to swallow or blink.  I simply stop existing.  Our neighbor's cat has wandered past our front porch a few times and absolutely freaked the freak out when it discovers the dogs and I are sitting on the porch, just a few feet away.  But because we rarely do anything when we all discover the cat staring at us, the cat is growing braver.  

Josie however, still has some work to do.