Henry Escapes

Poor Henry.  He loves everyone (whether they love him or not) and all he wants out of life is to spread his furry little love around.  All the time.

This is just fine when Joey and I are the only ones home.  He's real giddy for about the first twenty minutes in the morning, then the first twenty minutes when we first get home, but after that he's all worn out and just wants to chew on his cow.

Now when we have visitors...it's a completely new ballgame.  It's like he knows that they're only going to stay for a few hours, so he goes completely insane trying to say "Hi!  So excited you're here!  I'm misbehaving!  My mom is embarrassed!" all at the same time.  He runs in circles, brings them all of his toys to see if they'll play fetch with him, gets in between their legs when they're walking so they almost kick him or trip over him and above all makes a general nuisance of himself.  (Probably something like a 6ish year old?  It's hard for me to guess for a normal child; I know I was annoying the entirety of my childhood.)

So, as Joey and I shake our heads and try to think of what we can do to calm this fiend aside from picking him up and holding him, we think we get a good picture of what parenting may be like.  However, at least our real children will be able to speak English.

Last evening we had such a visitor.  A friend of ours from college is moving to Dallas and going to DTS (yay, another convert!) and needed a place to stay until his apartment was available. 

Joey was a fantastic host and, in my absence, fed our visitor and made up the futon.  (Many kudos to you, sweetie!)  Henry just ran around and tried to get our guest to play with him.  His efforts were met with muted enthusiasm.

At one point, Henry jumped up on the freshly made up futon and our guest said, "No!  Not on the futon!"  so I dove over and grabbed Henry.

"Sorry," I said, "He sits on the futon most of the time because he has a good vantage point of the entire house.  So he thinks it's his.  I'll try to keep an eye on him, though, so he stays off."

It didn't work very well. 

We stuffed him in our room last and tried to keep him quiet.  He's a fireball of energy, though, so it was a challenge.  (Especially when he started doing laps at 3:00 a.m .  Trying to get him back to sleep was no easy task!)  Joey and I alternated time in the bathroom so one of us was in the bedroom with Henry so he wouldn't escape and go jump on our sleeping guest.  That's such a terrible way to wake up.

I left at 7:30 and Joey left shortly thereafter.  He put Henry in the kitchen, where he usually stays, shut the French doors and jammed a chair underneath the knobs.  (He can open the doors if there's nothing in front of them.  He's Houdini.)  We weren't sure if he would be quiet or not.  Knowing that someone was still in the house (sleeping or not) that was not Joey or I might be enough to make him bark. (Fortunately he barely ever barks.)

I'm not sure if he barked, but according to our guest, Henry rammed himself against those French doors until he was able to move the chair I'd put under the handles just enough that he could squeeze out.

What a stupid dog.

And I feel really horrible for our poor guest who, no doubt, was rudely awoken by a 12 pound furball bounding into his bed and licking his face.  We're such terrible hosts.