a very special tradition

Ella’s favorite day is Sunday. Sunday is laundry day about 90% of the time. She waits for me to go downstairs and get everything sorted. Then she sneaks up on me and wiggles her way into the mess of clothes and curls up around my feet. We’ve created a system that works fairly well. If I decide I want to move my feet I must give her a belly rub for disturbing her. If I don’t give her some lovens she gets disgruntled and snuffles at me. Rose and Peppy do not come downstairs for laundry day. They usually stay upstairs, mostly because they associate the basement with baths, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s something else. Peppy was not my dog to begin with. He was an outside dog when I met him, and after sneaking him inside several times we became instant friends. There really was no laundry day then. I didn’t initially live with Peppy because he was Robert’s dog. When we got Rose she was already 4 months old and a very fat puppy. She never was small. She has always been a dinosaur. When she was little she was just a midget dino. Ella, however, is an entirely different story. We got her when she was barely 2 months old. She was tiny and eternally fluffy. No amount of dirt could ruin her poof. After bath day, which is usually on Saturdays, she became a solid ball of golden fluff. So, on laundry day I would throw her in the pile of dirty clothes and carry her downstairs. When the laundry was done I’d throw her back in the basket with the clean clothes and carry her upstairs, and she would stay in the basket until the very last sock found its mate. I can tell you right now that there is nothing better than a fluffy puppy in a basket of warm towels and socks. It became a tradition that only she and I shared. After a couple of months though, she, like Rose, turned into a dinosaur and her basket rides became basket pushes. When I got to the top of the stairs I would tell her to politely hop out and when we got to the bottom of the stairs she’d jump back in for the short push to the washing machine. When she could no longer fit in the basket the basket pushes stopped. I think this may be why she loves laundry day so much. It’s her special time with me. The tradition almost came to a halt a little while ago. Robert, being the thoughtful person that he is, bought me a laundry organizer. It was a wonderful thing, with three connecting baskets. When I took the laundry down and organized it into the three baskets, however there were no clothes on the floor, which is a wonderful thing if you’re not Ella! When Ella came downstairs and saw that there was nothing to curl up in her entire doggy spirit drooped, and she dejectedly went on back upstairs. Although it was a great organizer I had no other choice but to stop using it. Our tradition continues on.