The Small Dog Chronicles: Notes from On High

My minion recently changed allegiance. 

She looks to the Food God for her treats these days, and it is his side of the bed she visits to be reassured in the middle of the night.

Despite it being ME who carried her down the stairs for the emergency midnight pitstop last night. And ME who prepared the hot-water gravy that made her kibble breakfast extra-super delicious. 

Regardless the scrumptious morsel of cheese I just handed over with her medicine hidden inside.

Nope, doesn't seem to matter. Perhaps this last trip was too much for her faith. After all, we were gone more than two weeks, bounced home for a single night, and were gone again for a couple of days. A small dog, evidently, has a limit. She loves visiting Uncle Markie -- his kids mean that there is abundant food droppage, she gets to go in the car, and wherever they end up, she kind of rules the roost. Plus her religion has proven flexible before.

So now, she is walking away from me when I sit on the floor to indulge in a little belly-rubbing. She's got her glowing bug-eyed gaze tracking Mr. Linton and she barely glances at me.

She is pinning her belief on men, perhaps, having been abandoned by one woman after another. 

It's sad but true: her mysterious first owner who went into nursing care and whose daughter (I picture a sort of Snidely Whiplash female) could not stand the small dog; my mom; and now, repeatedly, me. The first time I returned from a long trip solo, I found her cuddled on the couch with my husband, belly to the sky, the expression on her flat face one of vague befuddlement: "I thought you died!"

I find I am not a smiting-and-brimstone kind of deity, at least in my non-fiction life. But it does kind of sting.  Sharper than a serpent's tooth and all that.