Due to my penchant for fainting in hot weather, I have installed a desk fan in the sitting room to keep it bearable without the need to remove layers of clothes. It oscillates gently back and forth and keeps me nice and cool. Unfortunately, Buddy has taken exception to it, and refuses to believe that when he is not watching it, that it will not shed its mesh metal guards, and chase him around the room shaving off his coat. Heaven knows, in this weather, he'd probably be cooler with less fur.
He has to sneak past it, making sure it's not looking when he runs into the sitting room from the kitchen, and then dives to take cover from it on the sofa. Unfortunately, such is his fear of the fan, that when ordered "off" the sofa, he wets himself, as it involves being sent involuntarily into the jaws of the death fan. This renders the sofa un-sittable for humans. This human needs to sit down a lot, so I go and get the inflatable gym ball of certain dog-death.
For anyone who has seen that Indiana Jones film, I think he assumes it will start rolling at him, chasing him through the entire downstairs of the house, and he, the plucky hero will be forced to flee it movements by hiding in corners or gaps between kitchen cabinets. These large, blue, inflatable, 65cm diameter gym balls are not to be trusted. They are in league with the ironing board, don't you know!
The ironing board has been Buddy's arch-nemesis from the day we brought him home. Ironing boards are the scourge of small dogs, and a lesser known fact is that they feast entirely on a diet of dogs weighing under 4 kilos. Therefore a small dog must never walk under an ironing board lest it be snapped shut in the ironing board's legs and held until devoured (or at least, ironed flat) by the laundry aid.
There is no bounds to Buddy's nervousness. We've had him since he was a puppy, and we know his breeders very, very well. We can safely say that he's never had a "bad experience" where an ironing board, a desk fan, a gym ball or any other household appliance is concerned. If we had got him from a rescue centre, we would have assumed that he had been maltreated by gym balls, tortured with desk fans, and been shut in an ironing board.
The truth of the matter is that Buddy has a fertile imagination and an unhealthy nervousness of household objects. Lucky then, that he has a family who love him, and cherish him, and allow him his quirks, and coax him into not being scared any more with treats, honeyed words, and praise.
He's lying sprawled on Mal's half of the sofa, just next to me. He's enjoying the draft of the fan. It's not oscillating. We have reached a compromise. Baby steps.
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