My Recent Vacation without Fudge and Vern!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Last Wednesday, my DD and I left for five days to go home to Indiana. I have lots of family there and we also wanted to get to the Vera Bradley Outlet sale. Fudge and Vern stayed home and my DH took the time off work to care for them and put in a deer fence. I might have been a little bossy, but I asked two things of him:

 

1.) Do something each day with the dogs and by do something, I did not mean allow them to watch him work in the garage.

2.) Keep them on my schedule. I have worked so hard to get Vern to sleep until 9 am. I like to get up at 7 am and this allows me two hours to get a lot of work done.

 

My biggest fear was the dogs would be in the house all day, unsupervised, while my DH worked on the fence or puttered around in his garage. I am not exactly sure what he keeps in that garage, but, more than once, he has said he needed to go to the garage for a particular nail or screw and we don't see him again for five hours. Usually, after he spends all that time in the garage, he will come back into the house and announce he now needs to go to Home Depot, because his five hour search turned up nothing. 

 

The first tip off he was making his own rules occurred when I talked to my DH on day one and he mentioned he was really tired, since he had gotten up with the dogs at 7 am and went to the nearby state park to walk them. I had the dog sitter come and get them on Wednesday and Friday and take them to her house to play with her dogs and help him have time to work on the fence. The dog sitter has a Honda Element (I think) and the back door opens in parts...the top lifts up, and the bottoms lifts down. She told me that on Friday, she had only opened the top part of the door and Fudge and Vern leaped into her car before she could get the bottom part down. They appeared eager to leave our house.  This leads me to conclude that both dogs probably did spend a little time watching him work in the garage and/or dig holes for the fence posts.

 

Now, I am not a detective, but over the years I have been able to piece together things that happen when I am not home and drive my family nuts with the dead on accuracy I have in recounting the events of the day. Here is an example. My DH will make himself a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich. The knife he uses to spread the PB is either left on the counter or placed in the sink. I have tried conducting lessons about opening the dishwasher and putting the utensil directly into the rack, but it just seems so overwhelming to all of them. Usually, the PB jar lid is not screwed back on and he likes to stand over the utensil drawer with it slightly ajar, so that a large amount of crumbs make their way into the drawer. When I come home and say, "I see you made yourself a PB&J sandwich," he always responds with, "How did you know that? I cleaned up all my mess."

 

When I got home on Sunday, I was able to use my same detective skills to determine that Fudge and Vern might have entertained each other alone in the house. My first clue was in the sun room....muddy paw prints covered my NEW sofa cover that sits directly in front of a window that overlooks both the garage and the area he was putting the fence. I have never seen them on this sofa. My DH has a great sense of self preservation, so he has no idea how the muddy prints occurred, however he does admit they belong to Fudge and Vern. The second clue is the hot tub cover has been chewed down to the bone (no pun intended) in a long strip of about 18 inches. They have not done something like that in ages which leads me to believe A) He was in the garage so long, they decided to forage for food or B) They were left in the yard too long without water and went in search of it any place they could find. My DH's response was, "I wonder when that happened?" Hmmmmmn!  The last clue is that almost every window overlooking the garage and yard area is covered in nose prints, and I mean, the prints are very high up, like they were standing on their back paws. I have visions of them tapping on the windows and praying he would notice them. I can just see him yelling from the garage, "I'll be in soon.  I just need to find this nail first."

 

The moral of this story. When you leave your dogs in the care of another person, they just might have their own way of doing things. The dogs survived. My DD and I had a great time. My DH looked forward to going back to work. He said taking care of two dogs and trying to get a fence put in was a lot of hard work :) Oh, and Fudge and Vern got up on Monday at 6:45 am!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Lisa, You are very wise and I like the way you think!!

[Lisa, Daisy & Dexter]

Of course, we can't let them know with certainty where they stand so 3 is a good place....even though we know better (sometimes).

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Lisa, You are correct...with or without that fence, I do have a good life :) I love how the love for my DH is #3...LOL.

[Lisa, Daisy & Dexter]

Oh I see your fence is NOT complete. However it is obvious that:

1- you adore your kids.

2- you adore your dogs.

3 - you apparently also love your DH :-)

Yours is a good life Laurie!

[Lisa, Daisy & Dexter]

But is the fence up?

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

BG, Thank you for the laugh. It must be exciting to be married to a Disney Dad!

[BG and Gavin]

For what it's worth, when it comes to Gavin DH calls me "the rules lady" and I  call him "Disney dad."  When I get partiularly annoyed I refer to him as Gavin's "litter mate."  ;)

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Maryann, At least you had the nerve to keep going every year....LOL.

Nancy, The deer fence is still not done, but mainly because I was concerned about the layout :) We have had so much rain too, it is hard to get anything done out in the yard. Hopefully, this weekend, I can lock him out of the garage and he can concentrate on the fence.

[Maryann,Roo and Tigger]

Reminds me of when I left my two young children with my husband once a year for 48 hours for a "girls' weekend".  I coined a name for it:  benign neglect.  He would not have let the house burn down around them, but neither did he keep them on anything resembling a schedule; no baths, no bedtime, all tv time, all meals left to heat up in refrigerator as well as fruits and veggies, trash full of McD wrappers, and so on.  My husband really is a DH,....... so what's up?  Soliciting fun dad award, that's what.

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

But do you have a new deer fence?? Or was too much time spent in the garage looking for just the right nail?