The Scary Land of No

Every couple of hours, I, the devilishly handsome pup with flowing blonde hair, a winning personality, and a bright toothy smile (with dimples, don’t forget the dimples), does a loop around the house to make sure that everything is in its place and that food isn’t being consumed without me.

During one recent walk through, I happened to glance into the first floor Land of No and saw something truly great, sort after, and spectacular about ten feet into the room. But there was one problem. How was I going to reach what caught my eye?

Me and Pa in my Crate

As my loyal readers know, I’ve had a long and complicated relationship with the Land of No. When I was a wee pup, all the fun and easily destroyed things that my family wanted to keep away from my pearly white teeth were stored there; protected 24/7 by a big scary baby gate. Then, when I was a little older, the gate came down, the room was cleaned, and my crate brought inside essentially making the Land of No my own personal bedroom. One might have assumed that that would be a wonderful arrangement, however it didn’t go over well because there was some bad juju in that room which freaked me out (even Pa sitting in my create with me did not ward off the devils living in that room). My crate was soon removed and the room remained open to me, however, I never warmed back up to it again (especially after Mittens the hamster, who lived in the room, made a run at me in her hamster ball).

But as scary as the room was, I really wanted what I saw, so I took a deep breath and a cautious step over the threshold. I stretched my neck toward my heart’s desire, but I came up short. I took another cautious step forward, way deeper into the room than I was really comfortable with, and once again stretched. My chin went forward, my chest leaned in, and even my tail stretched outward though in the wrong direction (I never particularly liked that tail—it always seemed to have a mind of its own). Unfortunately, try as I might, I once again came up ridiculously short of my goal.

Thwarted, I backed out of the room to the safety of the hallway. Was I really going to have to pretend that I didn’t see what I saw?

However, seconds before turning away, I got an idea. If I wasn’t able to reach my goal myself, then I would get someone else to help me; I just needed to find a willing assistant.

First, I called out with a low growl and received no response. Next, I issued a single deep bark. Still nothing. Finally, I whipped out my not so secret weapon: a series of high-pitched yips. My high-pitched bark makes the hair on my family’s neck stand on end so there was no way that they would ignore me if I used it.

And just as I predicted, immediately following the first three high pitched yips, Ma came running to figure out what all the fuss was about. Noticing that I was shuffling uncomfortably at the threshold, Ma walked into the Land of No and told me to “check it out” (code for there’s nothing scary here). Cautiously, I followed her into the room and made a beeline for my prize: a pair of Sister’s shoes.

Shoe in mouth, I quickly turned and skidded my way out of the room like the Land of No ghost was hot on my tail. Ma shouted “hey!” as I reached the safety of the hallway and followed after me as I scurried toward the living room.

Ma eventually caught up to me and the shoe in the living room where she made me give it up. Needless to say, I was not happy with this turn of events. I had called on Ma to help me retrieve the shoe—not to take it away from me once I had liberated it.

Honestly, you just can’t get good help nowadays.