WFH…WITH DOGS
WFH…WITH DOGS
Jade, Guardswells "Steading, Wedding and Events Manager" has been working from home for the last 7 weeks... we miss her like crazy...
To keep things a little light hearted... here is her take on WFH (working from home)... with dogs!
WFH... WITH DOGS
Ever wondered what your dog(s) get up to when you’re at work? I often imagined mine would be up to various mischievous antics – rifling though the laundry basket for my husband’s best Star Wars socks, prising their way into the bin cupboard for a discarded crust, barking through the windows at anyone who dares to walk within 100 meters of the house. Whilst all of the above are definitely true of my two border terriers Hendrix + Lennie (testimonies of a past dog walker and lots of photographic evidence of chewed up casualties) they also sleep. A LOT.
I used to think that I had a spot on the sofa and that Lennie chose to grace me with his company in the evenings. I’ve come to realise that in fact, Lennie begrudgingly permits me to sit in HIS spot on the sofa in the evenings. Since I’ve been working from home and have been stationed mainly on the sofa (things descended into anarchy pretty quickly and the desk has remained firmly in the spare room) this has become very apparent. I have been successfully trained to sit just to the right of where I liked to sit, in order to not disrupt Lennie’s daytime snoozing routine. The alternative is to endure an unrelenting stare-athon, which even the screen of the laptop can’t block. Hendrix, on the other hand, is much more accommodating, providing you can master one handed typing, to free up the other to continually scratch his belly. Any momentary pause in belly-scratching will normally result in an unpleasant reminder in the way of a sloppy lick to the offending hand (Hendrix’s breath is particularly rich – he knows his strengths) Is that negative reinforcement?!
Both of my dogs are driven by their tummies and since I’ve been working from home, their sense of entitlement when it comes to my (ok many) snacks, is getting considerably worse. I must admit, I’ve always given them a bit of crust from my morning toast, a little ritual between me and the boys. But now, I’ve resorted to hiding in the kitchen to finish off leftover pizza, in order to avoid the haunting stares of two terriers, who would have you believe they hadn’t been fed in weeks. Crunchy foods are so much more difficult to disguise from an acute sense of canine hearing (Top Tip- time any loud crunches with the closing of cupboard doors). Over the space of 5 weeks, they have succeeded in bringing their dinner time forward by at least 60 minutes, through a combination of persistent grunting, maintaining eye contact and misplaced excitement whenever I make the smallest of movements. I try to resist and stay strong until 4pm but they team up and it’s hopeless.
I’ve come to realise, that rather than embracing my daytime presence and enjoying my company, as I naively expected them to do, they are merely tolerating me and wherever possible, taking full advantage of my weak conviction surrounding food. I do love them though.
Just for laughs, a list of all the things they have destroyed to date;
2 sky remote controls
A terrapin shell (the terrapin had vacated the shell many years earlier)
A book on European butterflies
The replacement copy of the above book (it hadn’t even left the package, it’s like they knew what it was)
Table legs
Lots of loo roll (pre national loo roll shortage, thankfully)
Clothes pegs
Some really nice blankets + cushions
Zips on coats (Len does this secretly and then you find out when you next put the coat on)
A black sharpie pen whilst sitting on the cream linen sofa (you do the math)
Many, many other things which I have long since forgotten about because I love them unconditionally and forgive them instantly.
Jade Stott x
The sharpie incident...
