ChristmasStairs

Sailor here.

Whew! What a Christmas! First of all, we have a tree. It is a tall tree with lights and shiny, dangly things and something Mom calls a tree skirt. I am not, and I repeat not, to pee on it. Righto. I know that. Then there were a lot of packages under the tree, some smelled like fruit and some like plastic and some like books, and one smelled like Sailor cookies! I was not to pee on them either. Righto. The living room furniture was moved around to make room for the tree and I was not to pee on it either. Okay. Okay. I am a good dog; I only peed on the potted plants once or twice last summer because they were moved to the fireplace hearth and needed watering. Sheesh.

I got a hedgehog. I love my hedgehog. I was to busy carrying him in my mouth, I didn't pay much attention to what everyone else was doing. Mom said she and Chris were opening their gifts. Then Katy arrived to open her gifts. After much rustling and ripping and exclaiming, Mom put my blankie in the back seat and we all got into Katy's new car and drove to her house in San Francisco for Christmas dinner. It was the middle of the afternoon. "Oboy!" I thought, "an early dinner." But this was not to be.

The humans were in the kitchen cooking a goose and Zoe was showing me her house, her deck, her rug and her water bowl. Mom started to turn pale and smell sick; she gets these icky migraines. She went to find her medicine only to discover that for some unfathomable reason, she had left it at home, about thirty fast minutes away. She said she thought she'd be OK, give her some Tylenol and aspirin and caffeine and she'd see. But she went down the tubes rather quickly. It was ugly.

Katy told Mom to sit tight; she'd go back to Mom's house and pick up her medicine and come right back, round trip should take about an hour tops, hang in there. Well, the round trip took about 3 hours and MY DINNER WAS LATE because Katy ran out of gas and sat by the side of the road for a very long time, guarded by a highway patrolman, until gas was delivered. Thank goodness for cell phones. Meanwhile, Mom was really feeling awful and didn't want to take me and Zoe out for a walk. Hmmmph. Katy finally got back and as soon as Mom injected her medicine, she felt lots better. I always run from this procedure because I can never tell when she will be giving herself a shot or cleaning my ears with alcohol preparatory to taping them. I don't like ear taping but Mom she's not really fond of looking at me when I fly my ears. Was I just insulted?

We had a belated but wonderful dinner of goose for the humans and a goose neck for me and kibble for Zoe. Poor Zoe. Then it was time for a pee break and a stroll which was OK until it was time to come back up into the house. Trouble.

Katy's house has stairs that lead from the sidewalk to the front door. Many stairs. Slippery stairs. I balked. Big time. Katy got behind me and wheelbarrowed me up the stairs. Zoe laughed at me. Mom shook her head. I wasn't too thrilled. It was much more fun to pretend I couldn't possibly run up the stairs, never mind that I had no trouble with them when we first arrived. I was remembering the deck stairs confrontation of last summer and thought there may be something yummy in it if I needed persuasion by treat. Nothing yummy appeared. No persuasion by treat was offered. Hmmmph. I have to work on this. I balked twice more during the time I was at Zoe's but it wasn't as much fun and having my butt Ah-ergged up the stairs was a bit embarrassing.

Best of all, I got to spend the night with Zoe. Mom slept downstairs and I refused to go down the stairs to sleep in her room. They were slippery stairs. Dark stairs. Narrow stairs. I didn't want to slip and slide. "Just as well," Mom said. "We'd never get him back up the stairs!" I started off sleeping on my bed on the landing, but Zoe lay down on my blankie and crowded me off. So Zoe slept on my bed and I slept on Zoe's rug. Neat, huh?
And the next morning after Erik went to work, we took a long walk in the city and I got to smell a LOT of new dogs and even go into several stores with Mom and Katy and Zoe and the owners gave me cookies. I like Noe Valley -- there are lots of hills there, but NO STAIRS!

Sailor the canine wheelbarrow