Dog Whispering in Reverse

Several years ago, I pulled into my driveway to find approximately twenty pairs of my husband’s underwear in the front yard. The dachshunds were playing tug-of-war with a pair and engaging in what came to be known as the Great Doggy-style Tighty-whitey Orgy. I asked them what the hell they were doing with the scattered skivvies, but being dogs, they only wagged their tails.

After I found out my husband was cheating on me, this is what I imagined they were trying to say to me that day:

Hey, girl, you know we love you. You’re the one who actually feeds us and takes the time to learn that, although we eat anything, our absolute favorite food on the planet is fried eggs. You’re a good gal, and you really don’t deserve all the crap this dude is pulling behind your back. That condom you found in his pocket last week? He didn’t buy it as a joke to encourage his friend to ask the pretty girl at the bar out. We heard him tell you that and couldn’t believe you bought it. But hell, we’re just dogs, and we can’t just come out and say, “You’re husband’s cheating on you.” So maybe if we literally air his dirty laundry in the front yard, you’ll catch the metaphor.

But they should have known I wouldn’t – or couldn’t – hear their message. After all, they’d tried to warn me about the affair before it ever started. We pulled up in our driveway one afternoon to find that they had intercepted the FedEx guy and shredded an employment contract offering my husband a heinous amount of money. The company was in Nashville, and he would be commuting during the week. He actually had to call the company and tell his prospective boss that the dogs ate his homework. Interestingly, he took the job, and that’s where the affair began.

We tried to warn you. We sniffed trouble the minute that FedEx guy stepped out of the truck. Shredding the papers was Laverne’s idea. She was trying to save you a lot of trouble, but instead we got in a heap of trouble. Since it cost us several mornings of fried eggs, we decided to open the package of sweet potato pancake mix when it arrived. It was delicious, but the bloating? You might have warned us we would be wobbling for a week.

My husband confessed that first affair, and I forgave him for several different reasons, the most important being the fact we had three children. But three years later, I should have known he was cheating again. Laverne and Shirley tried to warn me this time by chewing up their bed.

Again, it’s a metaphor, dumbass. We’ve torn up our bed, knowing you’ll say, “Well, you dumb dogs, you’ve made your bed, and now you’ll have to lie in it. Oh wait, there’s no bed for you to lie in because you’ve torn it up!” Don’t you get it? Your cheating husband has torn up your marriage bed, and you need to let him feel the consequences of the mess he’s made. He needs to sleep on the cold, hard concrete until he straightens up.

I filed for divorce. And one might think that would be the end of the subliminal dachshund messages. But I pulled up in my driveway one day after a weekend trip to find an assortment of my shoes, the kids’ belongings, and about 70 yards of toilet paper scattered over the front lawn.

It could only be the dachshunds.

In my haste to get to the airport on time, I’d failed to make sure the door from the house out to the garage was pulled tightly closed. Since we were only going to be gone overnight, I’d left the dachshunds with plenty of food and water and left the garage door open by about six inches, enough for them to squeeze under to get into the garage to sleep at night.

While the kids and I were gone, they figured out the door wasn’t completely closed, and they managed to push it open. Then they proceeded to have a party while their parent was away.

They had gone in my closet and pulled out one shoe from every pair. Some were in the living room, and some were in the laundry room. The most expensive ones, however, were chewed just enough to render them useless to me, and they were lying on the front lawn.

They had found Lauren’s candy stash and had opened ten or twelve red hot fireballs and then licked them on the white carpet. Red dye dotted the carpet in every bedroom.

They’d had great fun unrolling every toilet paper roll in every bathroom and dragging it through the house and out to the front yard. It looked like we had actually been rolled by a group of midgets who couldn’t reach the trees.

They found the 20-pound bag of dog food in the pantry and dragged it out of the house and into the yard, leaving a trail of dog food through the kitchen and laundry room. Ants were enjoying the trail of food, and I can imagine how many neighborhood dogs feasted in our yard while I was gone.

And of course there were piles of dog poop all over the house.

Hey, don’t be too mad! It’s another metaphor. Yeah, we know the cheating husband is gone. We’re just giving you a (short) leg up on the fact that your kids are almost teenagers. This kind of party could happen while you're away. Consider yourself warned.