Two Dogs Difference

Shika is very much a stay-at-home dog. She’s happiest in the house and yard. She likes people to be here, but really, it’s the house she loves best. Take her away and she stresses.

I can see her thinking, “Did I leave the iron on?” Then she’ll pause, and you just know she’s remembering she left the stove on, too. Then she’ll fret and worry and you know she’s wondering if the critters were fed before she left. She’s polite enough, but you can see the vague worry in the back of her eyes that the laundry is wrinkling as she’s allowing you to scratch her ears.

As soon as we start to reach familiar landmarks indicating we’re almost home, she stands up, quivering, her eyes scanning the sky for a hint of smoke – in case, you know, the house burned down while we were gone.

As soon as the car stops, she’s ready to get out and when the door opens, the first thing she does is check the foundations of the house. She was so convinced it had grown chicken legs and walked away while we were gone. Then she dashes inside to check everything out – the stove, the beds, the laundry baskets, the food dishes.

When everything checks out OK, she finds her favorite pillow and settles with a sigh and falls asleep – the first nap she’s had since we left.

Home is where she belongs.

Itzl, on the other hand, is a traveling boy. He wants to be going somewhere. Anywhere. It doesn’t matter. We can take him for a walk around the front yard, and he’s happy. He went somewhere.

If that somewhere also involves interesting sounds that he can puzzle through and tell me about, so much the better.

If there are lots of people talking – and some of them talk to me – why he’s in little doggie heaven. He’s working and he loves nothing better than to be working.

He loves going to work each morning, up early and eager to head out. He dogs my steps making sure I get everything we need for the daily excursion to work. He happily tells me when the stove bleeps or the shower changes from cold to hot water (it makes a sound apparently only he can hear and he always lets me know when the water’s ready), and when the tea kettle whistles, because these all mean we’re going to work! And he loves work.

When we get to work, he checks out the landscaper’s work to make sure they did things right, and marks it if it’s well done. He has to inventory all the leaves, too. Then, he makes sure the doors work, and checks out the phone and computer when we get in. Once everything’s made the right sounds and he’s faithfully told me about them, it’s time for him to doze, ears alert just in case.

He lets me know someone’s coming to the office long before they’re visible through the glass doors. When the phone rings, he’s there. When the computer bleeps, he’s telling me about it. Should alarms go off, that just makes his day. I think they run extra fire drills just to make him happy.

And on the way home, he tells us the train is coming even before the lights flash and ding. That way we know we’d better hurry or be caught when the crossing lights start and the bar lowers.

He’ll alert to sirens and car horns, and I think he can hear the lights change color because he always tells me just before they do.

But at home, there are few interesting sounds and few reasons to alert. He gets bored. He mopes. He sulks. He sighs and whines at me.

Sometimes, just to break the monotony, he alerts just so I will respond and check things out – and maybe, just maybe, I’ll go somewhere with him.

Just to make him happy.

His whole life revolves around traveling. He loves hotels – lots of new sounds. He adores shopping – those cash registers and door chimes make him so happy. And there are people with cell phones that go off all the time so he can tell me all about it.

He’s OK with staying home late at night, because he wants his bed around 9:00 p.m. and he doesn’t mind sleeping in one day a week (sleeping in for him means getting up at 6:00 a.m. instead of 5:00 a.m.). And he’s OK with staying home when it’s bad weather outside but he still gets bored and wants to play sound games.

Sometimes, when we stay home on extended weekends, I set timers and alarms all over the house and hide them so when they go off, he gets a thrill and tells me about them.

Oh, yeah – all his toys have to be noisy ones, with bells, crinkly sounds, and chimes in them. They have to have a crunchy, clicky mouthfeel – which is why he loves Beanie Babies. The beads filling them feel good in his mouth and they makelittle scritchy sounds when he chews on them.

Shika is the homedog and proud of it.

Itzl is my traveling dog.

It’s a Good Thing Itzl’s a hearing ear dog and loves traveling and alerting on sounds. I just have to remember to keep his sound universe filled on the lazy days when I don’t go anywhere and no one comes to visit and he has nothing to do – because he’s a Type A dog who has to be working all the time.

Shika does her best to help him chill out at home. She’ll snuggle him and play with him and bat jingle balls around for him to chase.