Giddy and Chloe, Sittin’ in a Tree
My boy Gideon has a new girlfriend. Or, ball and chain is more like it. That’s probably what he calls her under his breath.
Chloe definitely wears the figurative pants in this relationship. Whenever she thinks he’s getting out of line or being in some way non-compliant, she grabs him by his skinny hips and humps him. Giddy is around four years old and Chloe is fifteen months, so in essence he has sold his soul to a puppy.
We have two resident dogs, Giddy the Boxer and Karl the big black fluffy dog. Karl is nearly ten and definitely doesn’t want to wrestle. He has a limited tolerance for the youngsters. He lies in the corner looking perturbed while they play, and I always imagine him saying things like, “When I was your age I walked to school in the snow – it was uphill both ways!”
Fostering is a lot of work but one nice benefit is that it gives Giddy a friend, even if just for a few weeks. Chloe is deaf and harder to place, so she will probably be with us for a while. She and Gideon run around the backyard together, and then come indoors for Wrestlemania. She plays dirty, though. She grabs my boy by his jowly lip and then bites it. He screams like a girl, but she can’t hear him. So she just bites harder and then shakes her head. He retaliates by biting the backs of her legs, but he lost most of his teeth in an apparent hit-by-a-car episode that occurred before we adopted him. So he’s not what you’d call a formidable opponent. He is slightly larger so he usually just resorts to pinning her down and hoping for the best.
When the match is over, they retire to the guest room and lay on the bed in there. Gideon usually ends up being Chloe’s pillow.
Despite her tenacity in the ring, Chloe is actually a very sweet girl. She is smart and picks up
hand signals quickly. I taught her to “shake” in one session and now we are working on the “down” command. She adores my daughter, even though the kid is not always that nice to Chloe. Chloe likes to jump on A’s bed in the mornings and let’s just say that the kid is not a morning person. I don’t think A understands Chloe’s deafness. I’ve tried to explain it several times but she persists in yelling, “Get out of my bed, Chloe!” every morning. I showed A how to make the hand signal for “no” and she is getting pretty close. At night her Chloe tolerance is much higher – they hang out in my bed and watch “Oswald” together before turning in. (On an unrelated note, I just noticed the other day that Fred Savage does the voice for Oswald. Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley is on the show, too! Seriously, if you are wondering where the stars of yesteryear have gone, check Nick Jr.)
We’ve done something kind of unusual with Chloe, which is that we allow her to sleep in our bed. Normally we do not allow dogs (particularly foster dogs) on the bed because it sometimes causes dogs to get too big for their fur and then the next thing you know, they’re trying to assert their supposed authority in other areas, too. But with Chloe being so young, we don’t want her wandering the house at night. Knowing where she is in the wee hours is definitely better than the alternative. She spoons with me like my Lucy did, though she doesn’t groan and snore and sigh like Lucy did. And, like Lucy, she’s a good egg.
Chloe definitely wears the figurative pants in this relationship. Whenever she thinks he’s getting out of line or being in some way non-compliant, she grabs him by his skinny hips and humps him. Giddy is around four years old and Chloe is fifteen months, so in essence he has sold his soul to a puppy.
We have two resident dogs, Giddy the Boxer and Karl the big black fluffy dog. Karl is nearly ten and definitely doesn’t want to wrestle. He has a limited tolerance for the youngsters. He lies in the corner looking perturbed while they play, and I always imagine him saying things like, “When I was your age I walked to school in the snow – it was uphill both ways!”
Fostering is a lot of work but one nice benefit is that it gives Giddy a friend, even if just for a few weeks. Chloe is deaf and harder to place, so she will probably be with us for a while. She and Gideon run around the backyard together, and then come indoors for Wrestlemania. She plays dirty, though. She grabs my boy by his jowly lip and then bites it. He screams like a girl, but she can’t hear him. So she just bites harder and then shakes her head. He retaliates by biting the backs of her legs, but he lost most of his teeth in an apparent hit-by-a-car episode that occurred before we adopted him. So he’s not what you’d call a formidable opponent. He is slightly larger so he usually just resorts to pinning her down and hoping for the best.
When the match is over, they retire to the guest room and lay on the bed in there. Gideon usually ends up being Chloe’s pillow.
Despite her tenacity in the ring, Chloe is actually a very sweet girl. She is smart and picks up
hand signals quickly. I taught her to “shake” in one session and now we are working on the “down” command. She adores my daughter, even though the kid is not always that nice to Chloe. Chloe likes to jump on A’s bed in the mornings and let’s just say that the kid is not a morning person. I don’t think A understands Chloe’s deafness. I’ve tried to explain it several times but she persists in yelling, “Get out of my bed, Chloe!” every morning. I showed A how to make the hand signal for “no” and she is getting pretty close. At night her Chloe tolerance is much higher – they hang out in my bed and watch “Oswald” together before turning in. (On an unrelated note, I just noticed the other day that Fred Savage does the voice for Oswald. Squiggy from Laverne & Shirley is on the show, too! Seriously, if you are wondering where the stars of yesteryear have gone, check Nick Jr.)We’ve done something kind of unusual with Chloe, which is that we allow her to sleep in our bed. Normally we do not allow dogs (particularly foster dogs) on the bed because it sometimes causes dogs to get too big for their fur and then the next thing you know, they’re trying to assert their supposed authority in other areas, too. But with Chloe being so young, we don’t want her wandering the house at night. Knowing where she is in the wee hours is definitely better than the alternative. She spoons with me like my Lucy did, though she doesn’t groan and snore and sigh like Lucy did. And, like Lucy, she’s a good egg.
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