The Troublemaker

I am participating in #SOL. Thanks for the time to write, read, and grow!

Arthur is a wonderful three-year-old Welsh Corgi, and he adds lots of adventure and love into out daily lives. He loves my husband Ralph and makes sure to spend time with me, too. He adored our Corgi Rhonda who we lost a month ago. She was just shy of sixteen, and her feisty personality drew Artie to her.

Sunday was a bad day for Arthur. The dogs had breakfast and we sent Merri and Arthur out in the backyard while Ralph filled the bird feeders. Then Ralph and Artie went for their morning walk, but the rain made it a fairly short walk. I left for a manicure and Ralph went upstairs to his office for a Zoom church session.

When I came home, I had a bag of blueberry muffins in my hand, but Arthur wasn’t interested in the food. I should have known he had to go out. He went to the front door, but I ignored his fairly plain request to go outside again. I came into the den and settled at my laptop to begin some unfinished work. Before I opened Word to begin writing, my husband came into the room. “I lost the Internet connection.” I checked mine, and sure enough, no Internet. “The router is dead,” Ralph told me. Then I heard. “ARTIE!”

To my chagrin and my husband’s anger, I saw a small puddle on the floor next to the router. I couldn’t believe it. Artie had lifted his leg on the router. It could not have been purposeful, right? Ralph cleaned up the mess and thoroughly washed the router. After that he used a hair dryer to dry the workings, inside and out. Amazingly, the router worked again! Ralph ignored Arthur for several hours. The poor dog followed him around with his head down and his ears back. He was finally forgiven. (We moved the router off the floor to a new location that was Arthur-proof.)

Fast forward to Monday. I was writing and snacking on a few marshmallows. I gave half a marshmallow to Arthur and made a trip to the dentist for an appointment at 6:30. Ralph had left for ham radio testing. I returned home and let the dogs out. When they came in, Arthur jumped up on the couch beside me. He seemed to have acquired a large burr that was tangled in his ruff. I went to pull it out. Oh, no! It was the marshmallow! Artie sometimes plays with his food before eating it. He’ll toss it in the air and often roll on it, usually with his head first. It took a lot of snips to cut the marshmallow out of his hair. I think he was relieved.

Bad things come in threes – so far, so good for today. But I wonder….