![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The housemate's dog hates it when I leave for work, particularly since I do so shortly before she starts getting ready for bed. Left alone he would try to physically prevent me by jumping up and grabbing me or my bag, so when I get up from eating breakfast and start preparing my lunch bag, we have a routine of gating him into her study. He's usually sitting there - halfway out of the door - waiting for this to begin. He assists with putting the gate up, and we haven't managed to get him to stop doing this with excessive enthusiasm and strength, which is how the gates with plastic webbing have wound up with holes in them. Now that Bear lives here, this has become his chance to go out and pee before bed; I used to take him out in the front yard on a leash, but now he scuttles down the hallway and heads into the backyard without being told, and I call him in when I finish the lunch bag task. The trouble is, seeing Bear waiting to go out makes the housemate's dog even more troubled about being prevented from stopping all these wrong things from happening, so now that his gums are recovered from his last dental surgery, he's started chomping down hard on the latest gate, which has a ribbed clear plastic screen instead of the webbing. He's made serious punctures in the wood frame and a few days ago he reduced some of it to matchwood. The housemate's response is to pick him up - initially still grasping the gate in his teeth - and transport him into her bedroom. Maybe we should get a steel gate next.
We now have some tomato seedlings in the back yard and the large container in the driveway, and a bowl of purple petunias hanging on the porch where the upside-down tomato triffid was. The upside-down fabric pots are not readily available this year, and it had torn badly and started to tear more as I was removing it from the scene. The bird remained at her station in the geranium pot.
.