Pippet, the High Maintenance Dog

Meet Pippet.  She is our obsessive and sometimes maniacal dog.  We love her like crazy and she gives that love back.  Sometimes with a lick on the face, sometimes with a hug of our legs with her forelegs (quite the trick for a dog, if you ask me), sometimes by playing kill with the closest available human arm.  Her favorite way to say hello is to worm her way through peoples' legs from behind them.  Sometimes I can't give warning in time.  The looks on some faces when feeling a dog noodling her way past their knees is some good entertainment.  Pippet has made it her purpose in her carefree canine life to make our 14-year-old dog, Scout, as miserable as all get out.  She's really good at her job.

Scout still getting used to Pippet last year.

Pippet's latest form of torture (so she thinks) for Scout is to display all of her (Pippet's) toys in front of Scout while the old woman-dog is sleeping.  Pippet then nudges, does a dance, barks--you name it--until Scout wakes up.  Scout does not give a crap about the treasure trove before her and grudgingly gets up and walks away, ticked off that she was just woken up and now needs to find a new place to sleep.  You can see the dejection on Young Grasshopper's face.  If Scout's grunts were translated into English, I'm pretty sure they'd amount to, "Screw you, jerkface."

Pippet's also been at odds with animalia outside the house, namely Leo, a ginger cat who has just arrived here in (I think) the last year, but now basically owns the neighborhood; and Charlie-the-Jiggy-Eyed-Dog, who happens to share the same address with Leo, and roams the neighborhood just as much.  Oh, and that's not his real name.  It's just Charlie, but he has Marty Feldman eyes, so I added the "jiggy" part and it is now my official name for him.
Leo purposely lounges in our driveway, in our gardens, on our lawn.  You name it, if the sun is there and he's within eyesight of Pippet, that's his spot.  Pippet has wrecked two window screens by pushing hers paws through them to get to Leo (said holes are now used by mosquitoes and hornets as portals to the inside of our house in the warm weather).  She has also nearly taken down the glass storm door on our front door.  Thank you, Leo, for keeping Pippet so wonderfully distracted.

Charlie-the-Jiggy-Eyed-Dog gets to Pippet in a much more discreet way.  Though he looks very much like he's a shepherd mix, he must have some beagle in his lineage somewhere because his howl is undeniable.  Whenever Pippet heads out in the evening for her final daily "evacuation process," Charlie hears her and lets out a tooth-loosening, ear-bleeding howl over the fence to let her know that he knows what she's doing.  Charlie is an outside dog.  I don't think he is ever let in, thus he always knows when Pippet is out there.  His howling stops the whole process.  Which leads to an entire ceremony of Pippet running back and forth through the yard no less than twenty times, barking like the badass she thinks she is.  This is followed by another ten rounds through the entire yard, sniffing the ground.  A bit more barking, a bit more sniffing, and then maybe she's ready to continue what she's there for.  Maybe.  Somtimes the whole process goes through two or three more loops before we can call it a night.  And all the while I can be heard saying, "Pippet....go POOP!" every 10 seconds.  I'm sure my neighbors love this.  Though some of them (owners of a certain visually impeded 4-legger) are the root of the whole damned problem.

And finally, the most recent obsession is Hobbes, who moved to the basement of his own accord once Pippet moved in.  He is so old and so decrepit that I don't dare post a current picture of him.  I don't want to scare anyone out there.  Here is a picture of him from better days:

Pippet now holds vigil by the basement door, listening for any movement down there.  I'm wondering if she senses something that we don't, like in some spooky dog-telepathy way.  Let's face it, being 19 means Hobbes' days are definitely numbered.  I guess we'll just have to wait and see...

So, that's a bit of life with Pippet. She is very rarely at rest, often pacing with a worried, busy-body expression on her face.   It's like living with a black-furred Gladys Kravitz.  Who likes to sniff in places she shouldn't.