So bad. Almost a crisis.

I know you think we’re being cute with all our talk about living with the world’s smartest deerhound. We talk about a battle of wits, and you nod your heads because your terriers and retrievers are also incredibly demanding.

I understand. But truth is, you got no idea. My wife broke her arm, see, and Raebert started standing guard. He had to be where we were, which sundered the sighthound pack pact. He aligned his daily rhythms more and more to ours, then decided he should be in charge of ours too. He decided that bedtime was 8:15 pm, and he was really quite exact about it. He’d mill at the closed door of the media room until we gave in, then he’d stalk into the bedroom. Except that he’d emerge from time to time later, rebukingly. Time to go to bed.

We got used to that. Pretty funny, right? My wife got better enough to go to work. When Raebert put the hammer down. He didn’t want her to go back to work. She was supposed to be in His care. So he began a hunger strike. He wouldn’t get up in the morning. He wouldn’t go down to pee or eat his breakfast. When we insisted by tightening his collar and leading him downstairs, he objected at the doorway, on the landing, and at the door to the outside.

He’s stronger than we are. But when we managed to shove him out the door of the dog room, he retaliated by trashing his food stand and bowl, and then by attacking the room in the garage we had always called the dog room where for years we had fed greyhounds and deerhounds. He destroyed it. Utterly. Sheetrock, pegboard, insulation, all on the floor, the doorframe ravaged to the point of collapse. He built himself a hole that enabled him to get from the dog yard, through the dog room, into the garage, and then into the breezeway where sighthounds have lived happily for years. Then he blew past our tricks to keep the dog gate closed and ran upstairs where he insisted on being.

He’s very pleased with himself. When he gets upstairs he’s quiet as a lamb. It’s just his job to be here, watching over me and waiting for mommy to come home.

Battle of wits? He’s winning. At the moment we’re feeding him upstairs on a brocade chair. Breakfast and dinner. He can hold his pee and poop forever. He weighs 110 pounds. Upright, he’s seven feet tall. He will not change his mind about anything ever.

I rule.

Just so you know.