Champ's Diary

Monday, March 23^rd- Great, great, great day. I woke up this morning to my guy rubbing my ears. I love it when he does that. Kibble for breakfast (my favorite), then I stood by the front door and watched my guy go on his daily car ride. Where does he go? I love a good car ride. He must love them, too, because he’s gone all day.

Later, same day- Was feeling bored, so I took a nap. Mailman tried to break into the house. I barked until he went away. My guy came back from his car ride and we ate hotdogs. Great day.

Friday, March 27^th- Worried. The day started out normal, but my guy came home from his car ride early. He seemed really down. I tried bringing him my rope bone to throw, but even that didn’t cheer him up. He fell asleep on the couch and pushed me off when I was laying on his legs. Not good. Chased a squirrel earlier, though. That was pretty sweet.

Monday, March 30^th- My guy didn’t go for a car ride today. He got off the couch and went straight to bed. Not good. I was so worried I almost didn’t eat dinner. Almost. Kibble is my favorite.

Tuesday, April 7^th- It’s been… a bunch of days and my guy hasn’t gone out of the house. Usually, he eats his kibble with milk, which is super weird, but then the milk ran out and now he eats it dry. Like me. I think he might be turning into a dog. Up until this all started, he used to take a bath every day. I’ll be honest, I always thought that was bonkers. Anyway, that’s stopped happening. And he doesn’t scrape all the fur off is face like he used to. He’s got a smell he should be proud of, but he doesn’t seem to be cheering up.

Wednesday, April 8^th- Late night. Pacing around a lot. Having trouble sleeping, I’m so worried. Normally I can get in a good twelve hours of sleep each day, but things are NOT normal. Tried to get my guy to play today. Failure. I did everything: stretched out and growled, waggled my tail in his face, ran into the back of his knees, chewed on his paws. I even pounced on him while he was sleeping. I had to spend the whole afternoon outside. Saw a turtle. Those things are crazy.

Friday, April 10^th- Enough is enough. My guy forgot to feed me this morning. I can let that slide cause he’s normally super awesome about that. I usually curl up on this nice sunny spot on the couch in the afternoons, and I can’t do that anymore because my guy spends all day moping in that exact spot. Worst of all, he yelled at me for slobbering on him. That’s always been our thing! Ever since I was a little puppy. I go to my water bowl, get good and slobbery, and then I find my guy and give him a big kiss in his cheek. Now that he’s got a decent set of whiskers on his face, he’s too good for that? Well, I think it might be time to chew up a shoe or two, maybe poop on the bathroom rug, see how he likes that.

Saturday, April 11^th- He did not like that at all.

Monday, April 13^th- New plan: If he’s not better tomorrow, I’m going to get him to take me to the park. We haven’t been in a long time, but those are some of our best days. When I first met my guy, he used to take me to the park every day. It was amazing. So many smells! And everybody used to come up and pet me. People are great. They can’t run very fast, but they have these weird paws that scratch all the good spots, like behind my ear and the one on my ribs and the spot right above my tail and the one behind my other ear… sorry, got lost there for a second. Oh, yeah, the park. We stopped going when we moved into this house and my guy started taking longer and longer car rides, but I bet he misses going just like I do. I’ll do the leash trick, the one where I sit with the leash in my mouth and stare at him. It’s a pretty good trick.

Tuesday, April 14^th- Best. Day. Ever. I’m too excited. I’ll have to write about it later.

Later, same day- So, I did my leash trick. Great trick. It took a little while to find the leash, but I’ve got a pretty good sniffer. I sat so good… I didn’t move at all. I had to stare at my guy for a long time. He put my breakfast out, but I stayed sitting. It was really, really hard. Breakfast was kibble, and I love kibble. But I did it, and eventually my guy got the point. He put on some clothes that smelled like soap (yuck), and we got in the car together.

The park was so nice, just like I remember it! We went to this one that has a river. There weren’t many people out, so I didn’t get petted, but that’s okay. There were lots of bees. I chased a bunch and actually caught one. That was one out of my book of bad ideas. Note to self: Don’t bite bees.

I ran around like crazy for a while, but when I went to check on my guy, he was still sad. He was just sitting on a bench staring at the ground like it was a turtle. There weren’t any turtles around. I checked.

Down by there river, there is a rocky bit where sometimes I can chase ducks. No ducks today, but there was a woman on a blanket. She had long, pretty blonde hair, like Sadie the golden retriever that lives across the street. Sometimes, when my guy doesn’t close the door when he’s bringing in stuff, I like to run out and sniff Sadie’s butt. She makes me happy.

The woman on the blanket didn’t smell like Sadie. She kind of smelled like flowers. I wonder why the bees didn’t try to land on her face? I thought about how happy it makes me when I get to play with Sadie, and I though my guy might like her. I went up to him and barked a little to get his attention, then pointed at the woman. He saw her. I can tell that he liked her because he looked at her the way I look out the window when it’s time for my guy to come home from his car ride. Back when he used to take long car rides.

I thought he was going to get up and go see her. Maybe they could play. Maybe he would smell her butt! But no, he just sat there.

I don’t mind admitting I was desperate. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have done what I did. My guy needed me.

I’m not a big fan of water. I hate baths. And rain. And snow, which I learned last winter is just really cold water. Who knew? About the only water I will play with is a good ol’ mud puddle. The river was not a puddle. It was a least four gardens wide, and as cold as snow. But I love my guy.

I ran down to the river and jumped it. So cold! It wasn’t like a bath. The water was moving, fast. I had to paddle to keep from getting swept away. I don’t like to brag, but I’m pretty strong swimmer. I gave a bark to make sure the woman on the towel was watching. She was already standing up and yelling something. I have a hard time understanding people-talk, but she sounded excited. Probably impressed with my swimming. My guy came running. He gave that whistle that means it’s time to get a treat, but the water (did I mention it was super cold?) was pushing me away. Did not like that one bit, but what happened next…

My guy came and got me. He jumped right in the river! He’s like, the best swimmer in the whole world. One minute I was paddling my hardest, the river pushing me farther and farther away, and the next, my guy had his arm around me. We headed back to the rock with the woman and her towel. My guy gave me a boost and I scrambled up out of the water. The rock was so warm from the sun. It felt amazing. I gave a good hard shake to get all the water out of my fur, and the woman made a noise like a bird when you chase it around the yard. She and my guy talked for while, and she gave him her towel and a piece of paper. I thought the towel was nice, you can use those sometimes to get the water off, but my guy was more excited about the piece of paper. He made noises like he was scolding me, but I could tell he wasn’t really mad. He even let me smooch his face again.

Friday, April 17^th- Things are getting back to normal. Well, I say normal… My guy scrapped all the fur off his face, and he lost that wonderful smell he had going. He doesn’t take long car rides yet, but I got the sunny spot on the couch back! He’s been sweeping up fur and cooking food and we even went for a run yesterday. He does pretty good for running on two paws, and I try my best not to let him know how ridiculous that looks.

The big difference is that every night we go on a walk with the woman from the park. Turns out, she lives in the neighborhood behind the house with the German Shepard that barks at me when we walk by. He’s a jerk, but she seems cool. My guy likes her, I can tell. If he had a tail, it would waggle every time we see her. And that makes me like her. They spend the whole walk talking, which is great because it gives me more time to sniff stuff. There was a squirrel that ran across the road tonight. I chased it. It was awesome.

Great day. Great day.