Tuesday, November 18, 2008

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Perry's lingerie fetish

Yes, I'm aware I previously titled a post "The Curious Incident of the Lactaid in the Night-time" but this post actually DOES have to do with Perry's extremely bizarre nighttime ritual. Every night when I put on my long nightcap and shuffle around my apartment with a candle on a plate yelling "Perry, bedtime!" Perry gathers all of his dead chipmunk AKC toys in a pile in the living room and then proceeds to hide each toy, one by one in various places around my apartment. He grabs a chipmunk by the mouth, attempts to squeak it to make sure the squeaker is broken and then surveys the apartment for the ultimate hiding space so as to secure the chipmunk for the night and make sure thieves do not steal them from him under cover of darkness.

You would think this process takes like 3 minutes - like grab a chipmunk, hide it under a cushion and be done with it, but unfortunately, each of his 3 chipmunks takes about a half hour to hide, because sometimes Perry deems the original hiding space not safe enough. For instance, Perry typically initially hides the chipmunk under some pillows on my floor but minutes later he's moving the chipmunk to underneath the bed because under the pillows was too obvious, or because I spotted him hiding the chipmunk and therefore ruined everything. Seriously, when I interrupt his hiding rituals, he has to UNHIDE the chipmunks and then REHIDE them somewhere else because while by day I'm Dr. Jekyll, taking him out to pee or taking him to the vet, turn off the lights and put me in a room with some stuffed chipmunks I just lose all reason and cram them all in my mouth and confiscate them.

While this entire thing was hilarious to watch the first time around, it takes an HOUR AND A HALF every night for Perry to perform his OCD rituals and the entire time he is squeaking, jumping and digging and when I wake up in the morning the apartment looks like a crack den. When I tried to tell the Oprah people that half of the mess in my apartment wasn't mine, they were like, "You need to stop blaming your messiness on your dog" and I was like "No, it's true, I didn't do most of this, but yet I'm still getting blamed for it and Perry comes out looking like a victim" and then they told me to "grow up" and "take ownership" over things.

1 comment:

Jenna said...

I believe this behavior is a compensatory reaction to Hailey stealing his toys.