Yes, it’s true, The Chicks Dig the Fuzzy Guy. Here’s Wylie with two of his admirers, Courtney and Katie:
Category Archives: Wylie’s Tale
Woof!
Another Day, Another Wylie Nickname
When he isn’t busy teleporting, or destroying furniture, Wylie loves to collect nicknames. He is truly “The Dog of a Thousand Names.”
This past weekend was spent visiting my parents, and as usual Wylie came along.
He’s been very well behaved lately, so when it was time to get in the car, I put him in his harness, but instead of clipping the leash on, I just carried it and let him walk out on his own. We walked out to the car and once the door was open, Wylie hopped right in and stood on the back seat, waiting to be buckled up.
The first stop on the trip was at my aunt’s house. A few minutes after arriving, I took Wylie’s harness and leash off and let him run around with my aunt’s and cousin’s dogs. I only had to call him back to the porch one time, and when it was time to leave, he followed me straight to the car again.
Likewise, coming home on Monday afternoon, Wylie allowed me to put him in his harness and he walked straight to the car, all set to go for a ride.
We arrived home around 5:00. I unhooked his harness and let him hop out of the car while I gathered one or two things from the floor of the back seat. As I started back to the house, I realized that Wylie was no longer with me.
Looking around, I realized what had happened. We’d arrived just in time for Wylie’s usual early evening walk and he was walking himself! By the time I realized what was going on, Wylie was already two doors down, following our usual route. I called his name, whistled once, and Wylie realized he’d jumped the gun and came trotting back.
Because after all, one of Wylie’s nicknames is Good Boy!
And he likes hearing it as much as I like saying it.
Teleportation
Before I leave for work in the morning, I put a gate up across the top of the stairs. The idea behind this is that with a gate blocking his path, Wylie will stay upstairs instead of trying to get Terry into trouble.
Yesterday I came home and found Wylie sitting in the living room. Today I came home and found him in the basement. (I fear that the next stage will have him burrowing his way out, under the foundation.) In both cases, the gate was undisturbed.
My conclusion is that Wylie read Wednesday’s post and wants to demonstrate that he darn well can teleport!
Jumper
The premise of the movie Jumper is that there are people who are able to teleport themselves anywhere in the world by concentrating on the location they want to be in. It wasn’t a great movie, but it’s a fun concept.
Three times in the past week, I’ve come home to find Wylie sitting in the living room, patiently waiting for me to come home. Wylie would very much like to have people believe that he has the power of teleportation.
The problem with Wylie’s claim is that on two of those occasions, the gate at the top of the stairs had been knocked completely over and most recently, the bottom had been pushed out of place.
The Fearsome Hunting Dog
Wylie and I generally go out for a walk three times a day. If the weather’s nice and things are calm, there’s sometimes a “bonus walk,” but those three core walks provide a sense of normalcy no matter what else may be going on.
The early morning and late afternoon/early evening walks are really just a chance to get out and stretch our legs while Wylie checks his messages at various neighborhood hydrants. But there’s nothing routine about our evening walks. Those have become the stuff of legend.
- Five years ago Wylie was intently watching a rabbit and walked straight into the side of a parked car. (Yes, my dog hit a car.)
- The next night, he did it again. Same street. Same car. Probably the same rabbit.
- Three years ago, while visiting Mom and Dad, Wylie and I encountered a black and white cat. Wylie wanted to go sniff, but I chose to get us the heck out of there before the skunk could notice us.
- Two years ago, Wylie was intent on his sniffing and failed to notice that his buddy Riley had stopped to “leave a message” at the local hydrant.
- Six months ago, Wylie was intently staring at the flashing lights on a police car and walked head-first into a tree.
During this past Thursday’s walk, Wylie was very intent on cataloging all the new scents around the neighborhood. It had rained almost every day for the past two weeks (and indeed, most of the past two months), so the scents were particularly fresh, to the point where even a human such as I could appreciate some of them.
So intent was he on the scents of the grass, earth, and trees, Wylie completely failed to notice when he walked within 10 feet of a deer.
On the one hand, I really do believe it’s commendable that Wylie is able concentrate so intently on a given task. I’m a little jealous of his powers of concentration.
But I sometimes find myself thinking ol’ Wylie needs a seeing-eye dog.
Storm Damage
When I came home Friday evening, the first thing I did was to head upstairs to take down the gate so Wylie could come downstairs. For the second time this week, I reached the bottom of the stairs just in time to see Wylie come out of the bathroom, leading me to chuckle at the notion that I’d just missed catching him with a newspaper.
Wylie’s not a big fan of violent weather; distant thunderstorms upset him and when the big storms come into the immediate vicinity, Wylie heads for someplace safe. Usually this means he comes looking for the alpha dog, but when I’m not around, the upstairs bathroom becomes Wylie’s storm cellar.
We’ve had a few big storms lately; this week they’ve included heavy winds and a bit of thunder.
After a little while I happened to glance out into the back yard and noticed that the storm had broken one of the trunks on the crabapple tree. Looking a little closer, I saw a big pine branch laying on the other side of the fence.
I have a couple large pines near my house. A particularly large one is just to the side.
Going out into the back yard, I discovered that in addition to the crabapple tree, two large pieces had broken loose from the pine next to my house. Along with the branch which landed behind the fence, another was laying in the yard. It looks like they were probably the same branch, somehow falling in two places. Judging by the hole it left in the ground, the piece in the yard missed my deck by less than six inches.
After taking Wylie for his late afternoon walk, I got the ladder out of the shed and checked out the back part of the upper roof. Everything looks to be OK, but I’m thinking it’s a good thing I trimmed those branches last weekend!
So it appears that “clean up storm debris” has been added to this weekend’s list of chores.
Bad Birdy!
I have a child safety gate sitting in the hallway at the top of the stairs. The general idea is that if I put the gate across the top of the stairs, Wylie will stay upstairs while I’m away at work. Of course, it’s really just one more thing I have to deal with every morning and again in the evening. Wylie is so well behaved that there would really be no harm in just getting rid of it.
Take today for example. After a somewhat unusual start to the day, I forgot to put the gate up before leaving for work.
Not to worry though! When I came home in the evening, Wylie was still sitting on the bed. Oh, to be certain, he was ready to spring into action if there had been any sort of trouble – flood, fire, break-in, ol’ Wylie was prepared. But mostly he was just sitting on the bed, patiently awaiting his master’s return. Wylie is a good boy after all.
Clearly it was that dirty, rotten Terry Dactyl who tore a hole in the sofa cushion.
Destructomatic Times Two
Riley is visiting for a few days while his humans are out of town.
After taking Wylie and Riley out for their evening walk (in the rain), I was too tired to go upstairs and ended up taking a nap on the couch. When I woke up an hour or so later, I discovered that the two dogs had chewed a hole through the back of the couch. Not only the back of the couch though, they’d gone all the way through the drywall and I could see the aluminum siding and feel cold air blowing through. So now, in addition to still being completely exhausted, I was utterly disgusted as well. It was enough of a shock that my only possible reaction was to fall asleep again.
When I woke up the second time, I discovered that the damage had been a dream. In fact, the destroyed couch was a completely different style than the one I’d been napping on and I never would have painted the walls that shade of green. Wylie had been napping next to me the whole time and Riley was curled up on the other side of the room.
Coming Attractions
From the mind that brought you an Interesting Afternoon and The Legend of Bunny Foo Foo comes a new story. A tale of friendship; a tale of adventure; a tale of a time when happiness was a warm puppy.
Wylie’s Tale
The heart-warming adventures of a young dog whose exploits thrilled a nation.
Coming this Christmas.
A Matter of Priorities
Wylie likes having a certain amount of routine in his life. When I get home from work, he runs up and down the stairs (and sometimes slides across the floor) until I take him out for his afternoon walk. When I cook breakfast in the morning, he lounges on the couch, waiting for a piece of scrambled egg or perhaps a pancake to land in the ol’ food dish. And when we come back from our evening walk, if I go upstairs before giving him a treat, his confusion becomes quite evident. (He’s quite insistent about this last routine. In addition to looking back and forth between me and the cupboard – he knows exactly where the snacks are stored – he’ll occasionally go so far as to block my path up the stairs. The message is quite clear, “Hey! Aren’t you forgetting something?! Where’s my treat??!“)
Today was a rough day for Wylie.
It was quite bad enough that no people food was dropped into the ol’ food dish, but to add insult to injury, the ol’ food dish up and disappeared. Being fairly easy going, Wylie came right upstairs and flopped on the bed while I got ready for work.
Wylie perked up a little at the next break from the routine. Usually once I’m ready for work, he gets a couple Milk Bones and then he’s confined to the upstairs for the next eight to nine hours. Today was different though. I went downstairs and gathered my things for work, but instead of coming upstairs with the Milk Bones, I called Wylie to come down. That definitely got him to perk up and once he saw the harness, he got even more excited. He was going to go for a ride in the car!
He enjoyed the ride in the car and despite all the stereotypes, he didn’t put up any resistance at walking into the vet’s office. I took a few steps with him toward the exam room and it wasn’t until he was on the scale that Wylie realized I was no longer with him. (The technicians later told me that he spent a large part of the day upset that I wasn’t around. Clearly he was concerned that without him to keep an eye on me, I’d probably wander off and fall down a well or something.)
When the vet cleans a dog’s teeth, the routine is to put the dog under sedation. This way the dog won’t be as anxious about the procedure and the humans won’t be as anxious about the possibility of being bitten. But because of the sedation and the need for monitoring afterward, it’s an all-day thing. They cleaned Wylie’s teeth in the morning and I picked him up on my way home.
It was pretty clear that Wylie was still feeling the affects of the sedation. Usually he hops right into the car, this time he had to take it in stages, using the doorframe as a step instead of jumping directly onto the seat.
When we got home, Wylie came upstairs while I changed clothes. I felt badly that he’d come upstairs just to go back down a few moments later and felt even worse when I saw him on the stairs. He didn’t exactly fall down the stairs, but it was hardly a graceful descent either.
When we returned from the afternoon/after-work walk, Wylie went back upstairs and stayed curled up on the bed until it was time for our evening walk. From his reduced pace on the evening walk, it was obvious that he was still a little groggy, so we cut the walk short, reducing it to about 2/3 of a mile instead of the usual 1 1/2.
And when we got back, Wylie made it plain that I wasn’t to go upstairs until he’d had his evening treat. He might not have been feeling well, but he does have his priorities.