I’ve always needed eight hours’ sleep, but no more than that. So I couldn’t understand why I was suddenly sleeping for at least nine hours most nights – until I realised the explanation lay in exhaustion… caused by You Know Who. One day, I made the mistake of boasting to Sheryl, Snoopy’s breeder, that he usually sleeps all through the night. At 1am that night, or rather the following morning, Murphy’s Law – already featured in these annals – caused Snoopy to demand admittance to my bed. I was sorely tempted – if only for the sake of peace and quiet – but memory of the pain caused by his needle-sharp teeth militated against it…. at least until he lost his puppy teeth.
I was puzzled when scraps of damp newspaper started to appear on my lounge room floor, until they were joined by small pieces of wood. Those two materials had been used to hinder the growth of weeds in a fenced area of my garden, containing weeping cherry trees and small Japanese maples. Unfortunately the ornate metal fence had gaps wide enough for… need I say more? I could only hope that he’d grow large enough to prevent him infiltrating that supposedly ornate area.
It is often said that only women can multi-task. But how many women have read a newspaper while playing tug of war with a boisterous puppy – or even tried to do so? I suppose I’d have to time the exercise, and/or pass a test on the contents of the paper, before seeking a place in the Guinness Book of Records. I might be tempted to make the effort, were I not so tired.
In anticipation of Snoopy’s arrival, Allan had presented me with a canvas crate, in perfect condition. When I shut Snoopy inside it, for the first and, as it turned out, last time, he screamed the house down. At the ripe old age of eight weeks, he worked out that a zip provided the means of his incarceration, and promptly destroyed it. From that time on, he treated the crate as another toy or, more accurately, as something else to destroy, with less risk of censure than when he exercised his puppy teeth on furniture, books or CD covers. But, once he could enter and exit the crate as he pleased, he enjoyed being in it – or what was left of it, and often dragged his disembowelled day bed into it for a nap.
However, I must admit that, if the crate failed to serve its intended purpose, it did provide a source of entertainment – occasionally for me as well as for Snoopy. Having chewed a hole through its roof, Snoopy would sometimes, while inside it, stick his nose up through it, which I did find amusing. But that amusement was hugely surpassed one day, when he managed to stick his whole head through the hole, and then struggled to retract it. Had he not been preoccupied, Snoopy would doubtless have wondered why tears were streaming down my cheeks.
By the time Snoopy was four months old, I was already running out of epithets to describe his behaviour. Having progressed from “lively” to “spirited”, “hyperactive”, “boisterous”, “ebullient” and “frenzied”, Snoopy was challenging my vocabulary. What next: “frenetic”, or is that no more extreme than “frenzied”? In any event, when I was looking after Allan’s elderly canines, they needed no words to indicate that they were singularly unimpressed by his attentions. And lest you think that I am guilty of exaggeration, shortly after I wrote the preceding words, I was having my dinner, trying to watch the TV news, while Snoopy was racing round and round the room as if he had a firework attached to his tail.
Under my computer desk there are many wires and cables. I’d placed a sheet of thick cardboard against them, in order to protect them from Snoopy’s attentions. And, whenever I’m working on my computer, he is next to my feet, scraping and chewing bits off the cardboard. When I left my study, he had always followed me out, so I didn’t notice the one time he didn’t. When I found him, still under the desk, he had a length of cable, attached to a loose plug, in his mouth. I discovered that what was left of the cable led to a box labelled “NBN” (National Broadband Network). Fortunately I had switched to our local KVNBN, so that box was no longer in use, which explained why it wasn’t plugged in. More by luck than judgment, Snoopy had chosen to chew through the only cable not vital to my communications.
My thankfulness on that account proved short-lived. The very next day after I wrote the preceding paragraph, my internet was down. As I said, I get it from KVBN, but John Sinclair could find no reason for the outage. So I looked under my computer desk and – guess what – another cable had been partly chewed through. Mystery solved. In the absence of any other candidates, the presumption of innocence was waived. And, having replaced the damaged cable, John urged me to bar the culprit from my study – advice I resolved to accept. This time Snoopy chose a cable which wasn’t plugged in to a power point. Next time he may not be so lucky.
