Yes, I know: `neurotic cocker’ is redundant.
Marshall’s getting a bit more crazy and I’m not entirely sure why. I’m not surprised…. after all, he’s the third black neurotic rescue we’ve adopted. I guess he just wasn’t as overtly nuts as the others.
I’ve heard stories but they usually take place while I’m asleep. My wife tells me one night Marshall jumped up on the bed and walked right on my back, moved around a bit, and made himself comfortable there. Apparently the sum of my response was `urmph’.
Lately it’s not uncommon to wake up with a black fuzzy head on one of ours. Since I’m apparently not terribly bothered by it, I just worry that it’s a sign he’s going (further) nuts.
I have a friend whose dalmatian spoons with him, so Marshall’s antics don’t seem terribly weird. But Marshall has a move I can only refer to as The Umbrella. When my wife lays on her pillow, Marshall sometimes arranges himself over her head, as if he were a rather fuzzy umbrella (without a handle, ok?).
Sometimes he moves past the pillows and rests in a shelving unit against which the bed sits. Spaniel on a Shelf.
In an effort to try to get through to Marshall, sometimes I yell “SPANIEL PILLOW” and lay on him. He doesn’t seem terribly bothered by it so I figure he either enjoys it or is doing reverse psychology on me.
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In the meantime, Marshall’s making the best of the summer humidity by hanging out in front of fans. Marshall loves fans the same way most dogs love hanging out of the car window. He loves air conditioning vents even more than fans and can spot a vent in no time flat. He does not understand positioning vents so he just stands there in front of them, blocking all airflow to anybody else.
Placed convenient to my Blogging Chair<tm> is a three foot tall vertical fan. It does a tremendous job of keeping me cool. Well, it does a tremendous job when there is no cocker sitting right in front of it, head almost touching the fan aperture. I am hard pressed to tell there’s a fan running at all when Marshall sits in front of it.
Sometimes when I desperately need a cheap laugh, I set the fan to oscillate and watch Marshall move with the fan. It’s nowhere near as breath-suckingly hilarious as peanut butter but one goes with what one has.
But Marshall is not a dumb dog – not by any means. Whenever I get to thinking I have one-upped the dog, he eats a few of those beef-flavored chewies. You know them.. the ones that make him highly flatulent.
It turns out that a fan still has some effect, even with a spaniel sitting in front of it. Every time Marshall lets off a bit of excess gas, it flows directly in line with the fan. At my chair.