My top priority right now is surviving the next four weeks. I manage, just barely, to work in free time to play with the dogs and to train Archie. He's coming along brilliantly, by the way. Loves his 2x2 weaves and any sort of tippy surface, including exercise discs and the like. His instructor noticed on Thursday that Archie was no longer looking quite so puppy-ish. I agree--he's not an adult yet but he's looking and moving less like a puppy by the day. I submitted his paperwork to register him with the AKC (Archie is currently a Canadian citizen), and hope to have that all completed in the next few weeks. He remains the perfect distraction. His attention span for training is short, in fact almost exactly equal to the amount of free time I have to train him!
But even though I have papers to write, presentations (or my bits therein) to prepare, and exams to study for, I thought that I needed to get this particular story into black and white.
I've mentioned before my minor obsession with mechanical pencils. I use different weighted leads and even different diameter leads to suit my mood and my purpose of the moment (don't judge, there are worse addictions). Even though all mechanical pencils have a small eraser at one end, I prefer to use a separate eraser. It is a plastic barrel about the size and shape of a pencil into which you insert a thin cylinder of eraser. But here's the key bit of information about my eraser: unlike my pencils, which come and go, I've had this eraser since I was an undergraduate. That is, an undergraduate the first time around. The darned thing is more than THIRTY YEARS OLD! There is a lot of history attached to it and I like using it for that reason.
About three weeks ago, I thought Archie was ready to have run of the house with the other dogs when I was in the shower. I was wrong about this. First, he destroyed an entire newly opened box of Kleenex (scattered them all over the living room). Then he chewed up one of my favorite mechanical pencils--I caught him on the couch crunching up remnants. I told him that he'd better pass any pieces he had swallowed because I wasn't running to the emergency vet! The very next morning I caught him settling down to gnaw on my glasses and that was the last straw. He has since been banished to his crate until I am completely finished in the bathroom.
You might well ask exactly how he got access to those things. He discovered how to get onto the table where I study, and where I would reasonably leave things like pencils and my glasses.
I rearranged the furniture to prevent him from getting up there, then realized that I liked everything the way it was before. He was just going to have to chill in his crate because I wasn't going to police every single thing in my study space. However, I have now developed a habit of leaving my glasses on the kitchen counter. He hasn't figured out how to get up there. Yet.
Fast forward to this morning. Everyone had been fed, a load of laundry was in the washer, and I was settling down with a nice cup of coffee to start studying. I begin laying out notes and my pencils. Wait...where was my eraser? And I was short one pencil too. I just knew that naughty fox terrier was behind this. I searched the entire house, inside dog crates, under furniture, inside dog toy boxes, looking for pieces of my pencil and precious eraser. That's what I expected to find, just pieces. Then I thought, what if he sneaked them outside to chew on? In the pouring rain, I went out and scoured the yard, even looking under all the bushes. Nothing.
Okay, maybe Archie wasn't involved after all. I went out and searched the car. No luck there. I turned my backpack inside out. Nope. Then I started retracing my steps since midday yesterday. I was sure that I had used both the pencil and eraser when I was studying last night, but maybe I hadn't, maybe I was just remembering using them on another night of studying--they all blur together and I hardly know what day of the week it is most of the time anyway. Maybe the pencil and eraser were somehow still at school.
I zipped up to school. In the still-pouring rain, I searched the parking spot where I had parked my car yesterday. Nothing there. I started composing in my head possible emails that I could send to my classmates asking them if they had seen my pencil and eraser, rejecting most drafts as just too pathetic. Finally, I went upstairs into the classroom where I found both pencil and eraser on my desk.
I went home and settled in to start studying, nearly two hours later than I had intended. But at least I had my eraser back in hand.
This is what vet school does to you.
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