I came home late one evening to be greeted at the door by my dog Gypsy Rose. The moment I walked in it was obvious she had been on the sofa. This was illegal. She wasn’t allowed on the sofa and she knew it.
“Evidence.” I said the word and took her to the sofa. She’d heard that word before.
It was late, I was tired, I wanted to get comfortable and go to the bathroom so I did not call her out on it except in letting her know that I knew. I headed for the bathroom. She was right behind me but when I went into the bathroom, she kept going right on into the laundry room. That was weird. Gypsy Rose never went into the laundry room.
Once she was in there she didn’t come out again. That’s when I knew we had a seriously guilty dog. Gypsy Rose wasn’t a dog to ever go into hiding for any reason. She must have done something really awful, something much worse than snoozing on the sofa.
I finished my business and changed my clothes, and still she hid out in the laundry room. Uh oh, this was bad. There was only one thing Gypsy Rose could have done wrong — poopie in the house. So I went through the house looking for the evidence, the pile of dog poop. But I couldn’t find one.
Surely I’d missed it. I went through the house again. Nothing. No evidence. No dog poop.
And still she hid out in the laundry room. Maybe she had peed. Gypsy Rose had never peed in the house before, but as guilty as she was acting, surely she had done something far worse than snoozing on the sofa. Something right up there with dog poopie in the house.
I took off my shoes and went barefoot looking for a wet spot on the floor. But nope, nothing. No evidence of pee. I was so certain Gypsy Rose must have let loose with something that I went through the house several times searching for evidence. But I found no evidence and still she hid out in the laundry room.
I was utterly baffled. I searched for evidence that maybe she had chewed something. But nope, no evidence of that either. I finally sat down with a midnight snack. Gypsy Rose came slinking out of her hidey hole and laid down, shooting me guilty looks out of the corner of her eye. She was waiting for the bomb to explode. She was waiting for the moment the piper would come claiming his due. She was waiting for mama to yell. She had done something really awful and she knew it.
But the piper didn’t come calling on her. The piper was too busy wondering what the hell she had done that was so bad that I couldn’t find evidence of. And because I was so busy looking for evidence of something really serious, I neglected to call her out on what I had actually found evidence of: that she’d been snoozing on the sofa.
NOTE: Gypsy Rose passed away in 2009, and Guilty Dog goes back to sometime in the 1990s. I’ve been consolidating several blogs into one, moving them all to Allie Mars. We currently have two totally awesome dogs, Dakota and Sierra, both featured prominently on this blog. Dakota and Gypsy Rose are featured in the book, Bad Dog to Best Friend, which highlights our training of a rescue dog who came with a ton of problems.
