Paying the price

She chased the ball and swam in the pool for three solid hours Wednesday night at my Mom's house. That left her a little tired and a lot slow moving on Thursday. Thursday night, her boyfriend (previously referred to here as the strappingly handsome Yellow Lab named Isaac) was delivered to our house for four fun-filled days and nights of racing to see who can finish their dinner first, knocking items off tables with one wag of the tail, and rearranging furniture and rugs in mad fight over a previously ignored squeaky toy that has suddenly become the "must have" item of the moment.

Last night when I got home from dinner, the inside of my house was completely upside down, including a turned over dining chair, couch pillows and even one cushion on the floor, and the magazines and tv remotes scattered around the floor after being tail-launched from their previous spots on the coffee table. I can only imagine the party they threw, but at least they were smart enough to get rid of the beer cans.

When we went to bed, Cheyenne's mission was to make sure that Isaac knew that she would be sleeping on the bed, not him. Once she was on the bed, she walked around it making her wrinkle-nosed, teeth-showing faces at him. Good natured sport that he is in his position of being completely wrapped around her little dew claw, he looked up at her lovingly and wagged his big yellow tail, thump, thump, thump on the carpet. In response, she lunged toward the edge of the bed and growled at him.

Not two seconds after I turned the light off, she tapped into some energy she'd been saving for just the right moment and jumped from the bed to the floor because she wasn't quite through with him. He didn't take that lying down, so they played and circled and stormed around my bedroom in a unison of blur that was remniscient of the rogue tornadoes I used to watch blowing through the cotton fields in Lubbock, Texas. Fascinating to observe, but you want to keep your distance.

This morning, it was evident that a good night's sleep couldn't even make a dent in replenishing the drain from the activity and play of the past two days. She looked like she was going to call in sick on a Monday morning after a long weekend of doing things she'd never tell her mother.