Dog with no common sense (France)

I arrived one summer at the French farm to find a new canine addition to the house. 

The dogs and cats on the farm are banned from the house.  Jeanette would loudly shoo them out if she caught them, waving her arms wildly about and stamping her feet.  She’s a kind soul, so I think she does it more to get a laugh out of seeing the frantic scrabbling about of claws on the floor tiles.

This new dog was not only indoors, but actually sleeping on the living room floor, lying horizontally right in the middle of the path from the front door of the living room to the kitchen, so that one had to walk around it, or step over it, as it simply refused to budge.  That is, if one didn't trip over one of its outstretched legs or something, and land right on top of it.

What a strange spot to choose to be in a horizontal position: more effort involved in trying to get out of the way as it would have to get up fully — that is, if it was trying to get out of the way, which this dog obviously wasn’t bothered about.  That encounter was in the afternoon.  

I mentioned this later to Serge and Jeanette, and was told that the dog’s owner brought it to the farm for them to look after as it had a leg injury.  No wonder it got a leg injury, I thought, with such positioning sense.

The following morning, I found it at 8am when I went to the loo at the back of the house, this time sleeping slap bang in the doorway between the kitchen and that part of the house.  This was even more stupid, as there was no room around it, and whoever going to the loo in the middle of the night could very well walk straight into it.  I had to step carefully over it as, once again, it simply ignored me and stayed put.

A bit later, on my way back from brushing my teeth in the bathroom (opposite the loo), I saw that the dog had now edged up to the 3ft-high plastic, upright bread bin sitting beside the doorway, with its head leaning against the side of the bread bin, eyes shut. 

The bread bin is really a tall and narrow laundry basket, made of plastic with big holes, converted into a bread bin because it is the right height for French baguettes and its holes provide the ventilation for them.  

I thought it was unhygienic that its head should be less than even half a centimetre (the thickness of the plastic) away from the baguettes on the other side of the holey plastic, so I moved the bin away.  The dog’s head remained at that leaning angle for some 30 seconds before it was lowered to the floor in S-L-O-W m-o-t-i-o-n.  It was like I was standing in frozen time.  Another strange dog.

(The farm is full of eccentric creatures like that, even the temporary visitors.)

(France, 2011)