The Duke

My parents took a trip out to Utah and Arizona for pretty much the entire month of October. That meant we got to have Duke live with us for 3 or 4 weeks. It was certainly an adventure. I tell you, he had no appreciation for the first class treatment we gave him here. He gets all weird and mopey when he first comes here and does this weird shaking/shivering thing all the time. It's kind of weird and Brennan was convinced that he really was cold and it was giving him the shivers. So what did we do? Started covering him up with a towel all the time.
Looks like quite a hard life doesn't it? And you might notice that that is one of our huge couch pillows underneath him. He just casually claimed one of those as his own during the first couple of days. Rather than fight that battle we just laid his bed towel over it and let him have it. But that's not all. No sir. We let him sleep in our room on said pillow and then we would move it out to the living room when we got home in the evening because he is lazy and sleeps a lot but likes to be wherever we are. And Brennan would literally get up in the night to re-cover him with the towel because he would accidentally shake it off when he changed positions. See what I mean, he was spoiled rotten!

One day we even took him for a ride in our car out to the Coralville Dam. We even rolled the window down for him, that's like dog heaven isn't it??
It was beautiful out by the dam, but we were regretting not making it out there a few weeks earlier when the leaves would have been even more full of color and beauty.
Anyway, despite the annoyance of the hacking in the middle of the night and having to clean up after him on our walks, it was fun to have Duke with us. But it was sort of disappointing to see his behavior when my parents came to pick him up last week. I really wouldn't have thought it mattered to him to come and stay with us after he gets used to his surroundings. But he absolutely lost it when they got to our house. He went berserk! I pretty much felt like chopped liver! And I kept thinking, "are you serious? I walked you and brushed you every day! Not to mention how we treated you like royalty, and this is the thanks we get! Sheesh!" I guess it's good practice for kids right? I better get used to feeling under appreciated. ;)