A Day With Our Kids

He’s a stout sixteen pound grey curly hair mini poodle
quiet and docile until his sister, via adoption a feisty
thirteen pound soft black curly hair also a mini poodle,
provokes him during play or tugging on a doggy toy
then he will just lift his front paw placing it atop of her,
she will then submit, subordinately, to his show of dominance.
Yet, when they’re released outside they both furiously scamper
onto the backyard scattering the furry tail arbor residents up their trees
and also scare the feathered friends that were eating on their feeders.
It always takes on a ferocity like a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock movie
where they take on a persona of autocratic rulers over their domicile, they’re dynasty.
He, Jules, follows her like a grey cumulus shadow
mimicking every sniff and curiosity as the ’royal’ terriers they are.
She will bark at anything as he then reacts with a deeper
more manly vocal bark as he gazes into space not even knowing why he‘s barking.
When my wife wishes to leave the house for whatever reason
Jaz must always go with her yet Jules won’t follow if I don’t go along.
My wife and I have come to the realization
that they have adopted us almost with a gender bias.
If I choose not to go with my wife and Jaz, of course, shadows her
Jules won’t go or jump into the car not even for a ride,
a favorite thing of his, but then he proceeds to whimper
in a high pitch tone as he sits on the sill
of our large picture window, possibly regretting at the moment his choice of human bonds, watching them depart.
He sits there on his tiger pillow with incessant whimpers and sadden eyes
waiting for mom and Jaz during this regrettable absence.
At night when it’s time to go to bed it is seemingly
their most enjoyable moment because they get a bedtime ‘chewy’
and get to share time with mom and papa on a warm bed.
As we all lay in bed and mom and I are reading, an ambiance of restful calm resides
while soft classical music is audible from the radio.
Through this salient calm, they can be heard softly chewing as they lie
side by side like Siamese twins yet to be separated of their attached umbilicus.
This is all calming until he decides to get up to get a drink
from his water bowl that sits on the floor next to the door.
Then a common nightly ritual begins where she will steal his ’chewy’
and put her paw over it while still chewing hers.
When he hops back up on the bed once again abutting his body next to her,
he notices that she has absconded his chewy and then he proceeds
to sound off with short howls while looking back at us
asking for our assistance to take back his chewy now being horded under her paw.
She at the same time is growling and jerking her head back and forth
watching his movement seeming to say “pay backs are hell, huh”?
It is humorously ironic to observe this nightly game between the two of them
because during the day he manifests a dominance with his front paw
while playing and wrestling with her and now watching him
ask for our help as she now holds captive his chewy under her paw.
During the day when it’s time for them to eat from a shared single bowl,
he allows her to eat first as he stands behind her like in a food line.
He waits till she’s finished then he’ll approach the bowl to eat.
Wondrously, the tradition in manners and inherent social ethics
of ‘ladies first’ seems to be well served in this case.