Tricksy, Tricksy

This morning I lost Paco.

Admittedly, things could have been worse. He could have been injured, traumatized, or even permanently lost. Instead, all that happened was that I freaked out and I was fifteen minutes late for work because that’s how long it took me to find him.

As is our usual practice, Chris let the dogs outside for their morning business. In the past, he’s also been responsible for feeding them since my morning time is taken up with trying to get myself vertical.

But lately I’ve taken over feeding the dogs because I’ve developed a highly refined system of feeding so complicated that Chris has given up trying to follow my protocol. This system is known by its code word, CHAOS.

CHAOS came about because of our little princess, Miss de Mina (say it fast). Mina has always been a very picky eater and now that she’s nearly ten years old, she’s started having difficulty chewing. She won’t eat any hard treats anymore, and she’s decided she no longer wants to eat breakfast. Because she only weighs 5 pounds, we (okay, I) worry about her getting hypoglycemic, so I try to make sure she eats two meals a day with a snack in the afternoon.

Pre-CHAOS, we had already started giving the dogs canned food in the morning instead of leaving out their kibble all day. At first Mina was thrilled, and any type of canned food was a novelty. A year or so later, she has rejected the following brands of canned/raw food: Innova, Wellness, Canidae, Artemis, Spot’s Stew, Solid Gold, Chicken Soup for The Dog Lover’s Soul*, Steve’s Real Food, Oma’s Pride, and Newman’s Own Organic.

Now, CHAOS reigns. CHAOS Stage One involved me boiling chicken and rice in one pot for twenty minutes, and serving it as breakfast for the dogs. Stage Two required that I boil the chicken while running some raw vegetables through a food processor, and combining the two later. The most recent stage involves jumping up in the morning, carefully measuring out some dehydrated raw dog food from The Honest Kitchen, boiling just the right amount of water in the microwave for not too long and not too short a time, adding the water to the dehydrated stuff, getting dressed and brushing my teeth during the ten minutes required to rehydrate, mixing the rehydrated food with pieces of boiled chicken in it, and finally serving the whole thing to the dogs. Oh, yeah, and we also have to measure out 1/16th of a capsule of glucosamine chondroitin into 2 of the 3 dog bowls for Mina and Paco’s joint issues.

Now you see why Christopher does not attempt to understand CHAOS.

All of this is to explain why, when I got up late this morning, I had to forego the CHAOS feeding. My feeling is, if I don’t have time to brush my hair, I don’t have ten minutes to rehydrate dog food. Since I get home around 2:30 every day, I figured I would just feed the dogs when I got back from work.

I was still afraid of hypoglycemia, so I gave the dogs treats to tide them over until I got home. Or at least, that’s what would have happened in a normal dog household. In our household, what happened was that Flacko ate his treats, and then he ate the treats that Mina refused to eat, and then he tried to eat my hand that was holding the treat meant for Paco, only I couldn’t find Paco.

“Paco!” I yelled. “Treat!”

Flacko danced around my feet. He certainly knew what “treat” meant. Even Mina rushed up hopefully, thinking that I had a New and Improved, More Easily Chewed Treat.

But there was no Paco.

I went upstairs to the dog room. I’d last seen Paco earlier this morning, as he was clambering into the papasan chair. I didn’t see him anywhere, but I checked under every blanket on every bed, and lifted up the various crates, houses, and pup tent to see if there was a fat Paco hiding somewhere. I even lifted the corner of the futon, because once I’d seen Paco suddenly and mysteriously appear between the futon and his crate.

No Paco.

I went downstairs, continuing to call for Paco. I looked under the blankets on the couches in the living room, checked the bed by the windowsill, and looked at the four beds on the floor. Then I went to the family room, and checked under both blankets on the couch there, and under my knitted blanket on the dog bed beside Chris’s computer.

Still no Paco. You can see where this is going, can’t you?

I went all the way down into the basement, just in case Paco had somehow followed Chris in there this morning when Chris got a drink from the basement refrigerator to bring to work. By now I had realized a few things. Paco was missing, and our house had too many floors and too many dog beds.

“Paco?” I called. I listened hard. There was no pitter-patter of tiny feet.

I opened the door to the garage, where just yesterday I had accidentally locked in Mina for a few minutes.

“Paco, come!” I said.

Paco was nowhere to be seen, but Flacko was becoming agitated. Paco, Flacko, it all sounded the same to him, and if I had a treat for Paco, maybe that was supposed to really be for Flacko.

I went back upstairs. Although I was pretty sure Paco was somewhere in the house, I was starting to sweat from nervousness. My heart was pounding, and I wondered if I should call Chris. I didn’t, though, because even I could tell that it was ridiculous for me to call Chris to tell him that I had lost a dog from inside the house.

Just in case Paco had somehow disappeared outside, I opened the door to the deck and called out “Paco!” Usually when I opened this door, the dogs could hear me and came running to be let outside. But today only Mina and Flacko ran past me to check if the grass had changed during the twenty minutes since they’d last peed on it.

I didn’t see Paco inside or outside, so I called Mina and Flacko back inside.

I felt pretty sure that Paco was somehow still in his room. I checked his bedroom again, including the futon, but still couldn’t find him. I walked outside and sat on the stairs just outside his door. I couldn’t see into the room, but I could see the entrance.

Quietly, calmly, and assertively, I called out, “Paco, it’s time to go outside.”

Paco suddenly appeared in the doorway of his room, as if I hadn’t just spent fifteen minutes calling him. I gave him a treat and a pat, and then got up to wash my hands.

When I turned back, I caught him standing between the futon and his crate. He wagged his tail. Apparently he was waiting for me to leave the room, so that we could play another round of the Looking for Paco game.

*Apparently she thought the name was stupid, too.

Posted by: ssjane | March 17, 2006 | 5:15 pm
Posted in: Dogs