For those of you who follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you noticed I had a little visitor this past weekend. Tootsie is my boss’s dog and she comes to work with him almost every day. She is adorable, sweet, and not very ladylike (what with her snoring and grunting and all that!). My boss was going out of town Wednesday night - Saturday night and I had mentioned in passing once I would totally watch Tootsie if he ever needed me to. So he took me up on it and I was glad to oblige.
At first, I was a bit worried how Dutch would do with the new intruder. He’s very possessive of me, but he’s also very calm when he’s around other dogs. For the most part, he’s a loner and doesn’t get all crazy when he sees other dogs.
Tootsie came home with me on Wednesday night and she was a bit panicky at first. The drive home from work was a little tense. She stayed in the backseat but cried a lot. She didn’t seem to know what to make of our house or Dutch. Our first night, I made the huge mistake of letting her stay in my room and when she started crying and trying to jump onto my bed (Dutch always sleeps with me on my bed), I let her come up.
I think I slept about four hours that night. If that. You see, Tootsie snores. Loudly. And she never stops snoring. Awake, asleep, on a walk. She snores. And since I need complete silence to get to sleep, it took me a long time to finally fall asleep but when I did, I kept waking up to Tootsie.
Thursday was a very hard day to get through at work. I’m not sure I can do the whole newborn thing anymore. I need my sleep! Sleep deprivation is not for wimps and I bow down to all you mothers. I don’t know how you do it.
The next two nights, Tootsie slept in the living room and I got over 8 blessed hours of sleep both nights. Ahhhh. Rejuvenating!
In any event, aside from the snoring, Tootsie was a delightful houseguest. Her favorite place to sleep in the house was a) on the arm of our loveseat or couch and b) in one of Dutch’s beds (even though she had one of her own.) (And yes, Dutch has two beds. Along with a handful of blankets. No. He is not spoiled.) Case in point, the cutest photo I think I have ever seen in my life:
It was interesting to see her and Dutch interact. Dutch is about 8 months older than her (he’ll be 10 next week) but his energy level compared to hers is completely different. I can take Dutch on a 3-mile walk and he’s fine. He may be a little slow-moving the rest of the day but he has no issues with the walk. Tootsie? I just took her to the mailbox and back (not even half a mile round-trip) and she acted like she was dying! Girlfriend needs some exercise. :) He seems more like a puppy than she does, but people are always astonished when they find out how old Dutch is because he doesn’t act like it. I hope this means he will live to be 20 years old.
They weren’t exactly best buds, but they tolerated each other. We left them alone for about twenty minutes on Friday night and then for a good four-and-a-half hours on Saturday and they didn’t kill each other. So that’s good! And it was the cutest to see them together whenever someone walked by. It leads Dutch to bark ferociously and Tootsie would get up and stand next to him and just look at him, like, “Wait. What are we doing? Am I supposed to bark? What am I barking at?” And then she would attempt her bark. Which might be the cutest bark in the world:
And I will leave you with this. Tootsie snoring. You *know* I had to capture this on video! (Turn your volume up on this to hear it. Sound isn’t great for some reason.)
Are you a dog person? What’s your favorite breed?
