Scarlett and Otto were lying on the living room rug the other day, her head leaning against him, his tail thumping lazily on the floor. Rob sat on the couch above them, part of this suddenly serene moment that I watched from my vantage point at the dining room table. Our house is basically one big room, so that even when we’re in separate spots, we’re all together. This has its upsides and its downsides. But when everyone is behaving calmly and cutely, it’s mostly upside.

Then. “Let’s get a new dog,” Scarlett declared. “I don’t want this one anymore. He’s too aggressive.” Otto remained beneath her, looking to me as if he was doing his best impression of the coffee table, a weathered wooden semi sphere that has never been known for its forcefulness.

Scarlett is off school all week, and Rob is taking the week off from work, too. It’s heaven for Otto, who gets much more attention when the two of them are home. This morning, Scarlett is playing at a friend’s house, but Rob took the dog to a nearby park to run him around and exhaust him, in hopes that he will stop eating pieces of pizza off the kitchen counter. “Don’t leave them there,” I said futilely.

Training a dog is hard, especially for Rob, because every time he makes progress with Otto, Scarlett and I reverse that progress. This is somewhat deliberate on her part. Example: She rewards him for drinking out of the toilet by cracking up and giving him full open-mouth kisses, which is a terrible idea on ALL THE LEVELS. I just make things worse with my general inability to strike fear (or a healthy respect) into Otto. “Sit,” I’ll say. Or “Go to your bed.” But you can tell he’s laughing at me, as he wanders away to eat a stuffed animal.

We do love each other, the dog and I, but I think we both miss the days when he could snuggle in the wheelchair with me and fall asleep. He’s so big now that the only thing he can do is rest his head in my lap, which is sweet, but always leaves a shiny residue of drool.

I do not exude authority from my spot in this chair, so it’s really sort of a miracle that Scarlett listens to me as often as she does. She seems to understand that I can still threaten and follow through on consequences.

We play a game at dinner many nights called Roses and Thorns. Each person at the table takes a turn sharing their rose, something good that happened that day; their thorn, something not-so-good that happened that day; a bud, something they’re looking forward to; and dirt, something they’re not looking forward to. Scarlett also makes everyone share what she calls a scaredy-cat, something you’re afraid of.

Scarlett’s rose on Sunday night was that she had successfully snuck three pieces of candy at 7:30 that morning. She often declares that she doesn’t have a thorn, so I attempted to help her out by reminding her that she’d spent a significant amount of time in her room that day for the candy theft and several other poor choices. “That’s not a thorn,” she chortled. “There was an iPad in my room!”

Awesome.

P.S.
We finally have our silver Honda Odyssey back. It seems to be working with its new ramp and motor, so I hope that this is the last thing I ever have to write about the van.

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