This was originally entitled “Gaslighting: Doggy style. 
I was going to be able to use this great line: “No, this is not going to be about sex. Mind out of the gutter, please.” But I thought if I had one more post about Gaslighting, my audience was probably going to go screaming off into the night.
Really, this is going to be about being gaslighted by two canines. Specifically a Rhodesian Ridgeback and a Treeing Walker Coon Hound. While I can’t cite specifics re: the abuses from the N;
I can tell the you about two dogs that made my life miserable for 45 minutes while on vacation. I do like dogs, but I’m sorry, cats are never this cruel.
We were on vacation in the Emerald City; actually on an island, but close enough for this tale. We had spent 3 wonderful weeks in the Pacific Northwest. My husband and older sons returned home; leaving myself and our youngest son to follow a few days later.
I had carefully packed two memory cards for my camera in my carry on luggage. I put them in a Ziploc bag with a few other small soft items. I knew exactly where they were. After three weeks I was re-packing, getting ready to go home. I hate re-packing. How is it that you can never get the same suitcase to close as easily as you did on the way up? It’s like an old TV show where the heroine tries to wiggle into a girdle.
One evening before we left, our friends and I were going to swap photos. I had filled one memory card, with about 700 photos. I sat down with my friend and we went through photos from our joint vacation the previous summer. There were close to 500 photos; I decided it would be easier to down load all of the photos from his lap top. “Go get your memory cards,” he said. I went into one of the guest rooms that my husband and I share when we visit……….
Moose and Petunia are very curious dogs. (Hey, I didn’t name them, the kids did.) The moment we arrived with our luggage they were in the guest room. Sniffing the suitcases….”Hey, I smell cat!” Climbing on the bed and laying on the comforter…”Hey, we’ll sleep with you guys tonight…” It took five minutes to move 80 and 65 pounds of dog from the room.
Early in the trip, the 1/2 pound of fudge from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, ”disappeared” plastic wrapping and all. Our friends never did find any ‘remnants.’ After that we were always careful to close the bedroom door so that we did not have a raid from any furry commandos.
……My carry on bag was sitting on the bed right where I had left it…except the door was ajar. I reached in to get the Ziploc bag with the memory cards; the bag was gone. I went back out to the main level….where could I have left it? I retraced my steps, 4 or 5 times. I looked in the bag again. My friend called me from the living room…”Are you going to bring the memory card?” The dogs were strangely absent.
If I hadn’t felt like I had stepped back in time, standing my office, hunting for something that the N had taken, I might thought to see where the dogs were. Instead I kept searching the main floor of the house. My friends joined in the hunt. They both assured me that the dogs would have never taken a Ziploc bag from my bedroom. My girlfriend started wondering, out loud, whether I had actually brought it with me on vacation. I had that horrible panicked feeling of thinking: Did I really bring the memory cards? Am I imagining this? I was having flash backs to when the N was gaslighting me on a daily basis. I had that same off centered feeling.
I should have paid more attention to the dogs as they nonchalantly sat on the living room floor. Petunia had THE most guilty look on her face. She’d look at me and then look away. To those of you who have dogs, you know “the look.”
After 45 minutes, it seemed like longer, of walking through the house, running my hands through my hair, looking under everything…we found about 30 dog bones or portions of them…my friend took the flashlight and went out into the darkness. I stood on the porch, not wanting to commune with the raccoons, skunks and other furry woodland creatures. “Is this it?” he called. He found the bag at the edge of the wetlands. Yes, the Ziploc bag that carefully held 2 2 GB memory cards the size of my thumbnail, was returned to the kitchen for inspection. The cards were fine. They were still in their individual cases. I can’t say the same for the Ziploc bag or the tea bags; they were quite spitty. Sorry Petunia, it wasn’t more fudge.
Moose couldn’t look me in the eye, and went to his kennel. Petunia was found upstairs in our friend’s bedroom, hiding under the covers. The next day, I surprised Petunia by coming into the room from another direction, she took one look at me, and her back legs couldn’t move fast enough. She raced out the doggie door and ‘hid’ outside under the tire swing.
When I got home and started unpacking, the cats were very curious. They kept sniffing the luggage, mouths open, with disgusted looks on their furry faces. “Ewwwww! Have you been around a Dog?!” “How could you!! Traitor!!!!” I took another dirty load of laundry to the washer; when I returned to the family room, the cats were standing over something white on the floor. It was a dog bone. I guess Moose and Petunia were trying to apologize.
See what you miss out on by not having dogs? I once spent half an hour looking for a boneless breast chicken dinner that I’d left out on a plate on top of the kitchen stove. Somehow, Annie (aka Devil Dog), jumped onto the stove and licked the plate so clean, I thought I’d forgotten to put the dinner on it in the first place. Come to think of it, we hid food on top of the fridge once only to come home and find the floor strewn with banana peels! So look at the bright side. You got your memory cards back with an extra memory thrown in for free.
Spoken like a true doggie ‘mom.’ At least when the dogs ‘gaslighted’ me, they didn’t even have the guts to look me in the eye afterwards. Sometime I’ll have to tell you about camping with a Basset Hound.