9/10 Pants and a Very Big Bra

My dog, Erica, fancies herself a total badass. Part pit, part boxer, she’ll chase anything that makes noise and goes fast. Small animals, beware: I’ve seen her try to chase a squirrel up a tree, truly believing she could go vertical just because she wanted the little tree-rat badly enough. And if you try to come into the apartment without having been properly introduced, well, what happens next is your own fault.

Really, though, she’s a softie. Dogs? She could give a shit.  But she loves people more than anything, and wants to be around them all the time. And that’s a problem for some dogs; they can get very lonely by themselves and develop separation anxiety. Erica has a wee touch of this. So I’ve been the dog-mom equivalent of an overbearing Park Slope parent, reading message boards and bothering the vet and buying all kinds of interactive toys that are supposed to stimulate her brain to distraction and exhaustion so that she sleeps until I get home.

None of that was really necessary, because, turns out, she occupies by herself doing what other little girls her age (a little over 3) do — by playing dress up. This is how she greeted Eva, her dogwalker, at the  door today:

Yep, that’s my bra. Which she obviously snatched off bathroom doorknob, where I carelessly left it this morning, and inserted her head through the armhole, and just chilled out like that until Eva arrived.

So…does she miss me? Is she still bored, despite the long morning walk, the kibble-dispensing ball and kongs stuffed with ground turkey, the music streaming all day, and the dog prozac (yeah, told you — Park Slope-level crazy parenting)?

Maybe I should start leaving a collection of things for her to try on. I wouldn’t want to stifle her creativity.