The Box Maze

We're living in a maze of boxes at the moment, as we gather our things together and slowly take them out to the POD that's sitting in our driveway. Over the next couple of weeks we're moving our household back up to the northern part of the state, back to the cool green, back to the drizzly winters and gorgeous summers.

Baxter spent the first three years of his life there, walking with me every morning, rain or shine. But he's now spent most of his life in a hotter place and he's adapted just fine. On the hottest of hot days, Baxter will go out in the yard and lay down in the sun.

Kirby, on the other hand, is not so well adapted to this place he's always called home. He doesn't like the heat. His low-to-the-ground build and mostly black coat just aren't well suited to 100+ degree summer days. When Kirby goes into the back yard, he immediately heads for the shade.

I know Baxter will do just fine back in the land of his youth, and I think Kirby's going to like it a lot better in a more temperate climate. But the stuff that goes on between now and then is proving to be a bit disturbing. All this packing of our things. All this hauling off of the indoor landscape. It's a bit unnerving. Not to mention having to navigate around piles of stuff that doesn't quite fit into the boxes we're attempting to fill at any given time.

So what are the dogs doing? Oh, they are making sure they're never out of our sight. Wherever we are, the dogs are laying between one of us and the door through which we must carry boxes. This way, if they happen to fall asleep, they'll know we're leaving the building...if not from tripping and swearing, then from groaning and stepping to try to avoid them.

I get it, though. Dogs are creatures of habit. And, frankly, so are humans for the most part. And nothing disrupts your life quite like packing up everything you own into boxes and hauling it all off to another locale where the same thing happens in reverse. We just want it to be over.

But at the moment, we're far from it. So Baxter and Kirby are just going to have to deal with it all...at least for another couple of weeks.