Room to room, I have moved about my house tidying up. The closet, the kitchen, the pantry, the garage, the family room, and even the dog toy baskets. Discarding and donating or rediscovering and refolding, the primping process proceeded with puppies pondering the piles. My neatly vertically packed KonKari folded t-shirts resembled a bookshelf with spines revealing the print and artwork of each shirt. Color-coding grouped the plain clothing, even the pairs of folded socks had their specific place in the drawer. My house felt more tidy than it had in years of spring cleanings. Despite the inherent mess of two large furry aussiedoodles bringing in debris and dirt from the backyard, my home was clean.

If I could just freeze everything in place perhaps I would not fall back to my ways of cluttered tupperware cabinets and haphazard sock drawers. Herein lies the problem with the whole “tidying up” concept. Once tidy, you then have to continue to keep it tidy or you find yourself back to square one. It’s like exercising and dieting to lose weight, you cannot simply binge on ice cream and Netfix after attaining your goal weight. What’s the point of that?

We spent a lot of money on the training of Koda and Summer several months ago. They were obeying commands like circus dogs. Their discipline was right up there with police dogs (well maybe the rescue ones,  not the bring-down-the-perpetrator ones). The trainer would say just the single word, “climb” and both pups went straight to the rectangular cot and sat and waited for her to give the next command (whether it was 30 seconds or a good 5 minutes later). Now if I say with strong authority, “Climb!” Summer and Koda look right at me and sigh. Sure they still sit, stay, and come, and they’re great on walks. But just as the pantry that I so carefully organized has returned to a relaxed “stuff-it-anywhere-it-fits” state, the dogs’ sharp responses to commands have dulled. “Climb on what? We are comfortable right here on the sofa. Not really feeling like the climb thing right now.” 

Tidying up and staying tidy takes work. Losing weight and maintaining that new slim figure demands even more work. Training puppies is no different, it just happens to be more rewarding and fun than closet cleaning or the elliptical machine. Nothing beats the snuggles with dogs that follow directions. “Good girl, Summer! Good Boy, Koda!”