The Hound and the Heeler

Sometimes it seems unfair to me that all of the dog stories I share with people are about Truman, and Izzy tends to get less publicity. The truth, though, is that Izzy is compulsively well behaved. My husband I joke that it's like living with Lisa and Bart Simpson. She drinks espresso and reads the Wall Street Journal when we go off to work. Truman helps himself to strawberry milk and then goes back to bed. Yes, and I mean bed. We obviously don't have kids because our solution to keeping Truman off the couch was to buy him a "doggie futon." I know. I'm not proud of it, but it did the trick. We used to have to pile other pieces of furniture on to the couch every morning just to come home and find them all over the living room floor. Occasionally he would empty a laundry basket of dirty clothes and make himself a pillow to boot.

Izzy, on the other hand, is the dog that sits at our feet and stares at us devotedly every moment she's near us. When Truman got his head stuck in a rose trellis, Izzy was the one who tugged on Chris's pant leg until he followed her outside. When Truman ate the 2 pounds of chicken marinating on the kitchen counter, Izzy paced nervously around the living room, and then hid under the table when we discovered the theft. Meanwhile Truman didn't think to even leave the scene of the crime, and just stood there pleased and punchy, licking his lips. When Truman ate my sewing kit and managed to embed 12 needles in his esophagus, Izzy met me at the door, so haggard and anxious that I knew something had happened, and that certainly Truman was involved. (He lived - thanks to the extraordinary 24 hour veterinarian care available referenced in the picnic excerpt).

Our vet calls Izzy "the brains behind the brawn." Izzy can tell by what shoes I reach for in the morning if she is going to the park or just around the neighborhood. Izzy knows what a suitcase is, and my husband has arrived more than once on a research trip and found shoes and socks had been pulled out before he zipped the suitcase. Once, while he was on a particularly long trip I came home from work to find she had collected all of his things within nabbing reach - shoes, socks, a T-shirt, and had brought them to her bed. (She has a more traditional dog bed - one that lies on the floor. It's still quite lush and fluffy though).

Izzy alerts us to every bump in the night, and protects us from the wiley coyotes in the hills behind out house. Truman has to be coaxed and cajoled out of bed in the mornings, and if it's dark, raining, or cold, either my husband and I are sure to be late from work. Friends say, "Just leave him sleeping then!" Based on what little information you readers already have, can you imagine what we would come home to if we left this dog not walked and unfed? You dog lovers know that this would be plain cruel, but Truman makes choices like this happen on a higher level - it's called self preservation. I doubt our insurance would cover it...but they might get a laugh reviewing the claim. Much like my boss did when I was three weeks into a new job and I had to call in to say I would be late because Truman licked an outlet and electrocuted himself. (Yes, we have outlet safety plug-ins. People with kids call it child-proofing the house; we call it Truman-proofing.)

Indeed, the naughtiest thing Izzy every did was eat an unattended cheeseburger my niece had left on an ottoman. Several weeks later Truman ate the ottoman. So, we just don't get the same miles out of our Izzy stories, but as you can see from her picture we always know what she's thinking!