A Puppy and Painter's Tape

Puppies and painting a house are an interesting mix.

Claudius was six months old at the time and only close to a hundred pounds. He is a people puppy, which poses a lot of challenges when you’re a German-line Rottweiler.

Poor Claudius. All he wants to do is say hi to everyone in the whole world, so when he sees people, he goes charging at them with his little stumpy tail wiggling. Humans don’t always this the way it’s meant. For the record, if you look at his silly face with his tongue hanging out one side of his mouth and bright brown eyes, I don’t know how you could mistake him for anything but a teddy bear. A hundred-pound teddy bear about crash into your knees with love- stopping is hard when he’s in a hurry and he loves you so much he will always be in a hurry to see you.

He was a terror in a different way while painting, though.

My dad was helping us. Claudius has a special love for my dad. My dad does interesting things in the way retired engineers do and he is fond of canine company while doing them. Hence why the puppy was there while we were painting.

Some dogs will stick their nose into the paint as soon as they see it, but Claudius was only curious and attentive. He’s one of those dogs who watch while you do things, figuring them out. This is how he learned to open doors.

My dad was cutting in from the baseboards on our stairs, more or less laying on his side to make sure he covered the wall well enough. Painting can be tedious as all get out, but there’s also something soothing about it, particularly when the old color and new color are different enough to see your progress. A lot of stuff we do in life rarely feels like it has measurable progress, or that it’s part of some endless cycle slowly grinding you into the dirt. Not painting, though.

You see why the dog was so interested.

But only so much. He was a puppy, after all.

Claudius sat at the top of the stairs and watched. As dad moved down the stairs, so did the dog, watching. He inched closer. I thought he’d stick his silly nose in the wet paint. His eyes remained fixed on dad. He moved to the step just above his head where he lay.

He leaned forward…and began licking dad’s bald head.

Dad cursed and chuckled at the same time, brushing him away then returning to painting.

Claudius returned to licking.

I peered down from where I was rolling paint to watch this drama unfold.

Eventually, dad had it. “Go upstairs, you little brat!” He carefully put his paintbrush down and led the not-so-little brat up the stairs, grabbing one of his toy balls and tossing it down the upstairs hall. Claudius chased after it and dad went back to work.

Claudius has an interesting relationship with balls. It’s not a fetch relationship. He grabs them, drops them, pounces on them, paws at them as they roll away, grabs them again, and so on. He can entertain himself like this for hours. It’s very handy.

He did that for a while while we painted. Alas, it was not to last.

Over the last few days of painting, Claudius had developed a fascination for painter’s tape. I had been taping the baseboards on several occasions and had reached over for the roll to find it gone, then turned around to see it in the mouth of a puppy, his little tail wiggling and his eyes shining, asking me to chase.

That day, though, left to his own devices, Ty decided to start pulling up some of the painter’s tape. Goodness knows how he figured out how to do it with his mouth. He pulled some, and then he must have found a taped-up plug.

Aha! his puppy brain must have thought, This looks a lot easier to get than the stuff on the baseboards. Hehehe, so much fun!

He ripped it off.

Up until this point, Claudius had never exhibited any interest in electrical outlets. I’m not sure they register to dogs, really. But with the painter's tape off, he now knew it existed and was curious.

He licked it.

And yelped when he got a shock.

All of us naturally came running up the stairs, which was much more interesting than minor pain and way better than anything else ever in his opinion, so he promptly grabbed the painter’s tape ball he’d somehow made without hands and took off at a clumsy run like a playful bear cub.

As the person who helps him out when culinary mistakes have been made, I gave chase, because I had this vision of painter’s tape having trouble coming out the other end after he ate it for fun.

I got it, of course, though first I had to trap him in a corner. Claudius is much more agile than his size lets on and he approaches obstacles like a tank, a difficult combination. He laid down while I held onto what tape he couldn’t cram into his mouth. Even at six months, his Rottweiler jaw was like a steel trap and beyond me to pry open, so it was a waiting game.

We stared into each other’s eyes, seeing who would give in first. My husband eventually needed my help to move some scaffolding and got a treat from downstairs to entice the dog to open his mouth, at which point I snagged all the tape.

The house got painted, and to my knowledge, there are no awkward nose prints anywhere. I can attest to no signs of painter’s tape having gotten into Claudius’ stomach. There’s probably dog hair trapped in the paint, which I find an endearing thought.

I wish I could find such joy in a roll of painter’s tape and disregard unexpected pain so completely as he can. He loves so fully and completely it’s hard to believe he’s real. Maybe he does it because he expects something from others, but I think the expectation is just that love being returned, and I think it gets lost in his own outpouring of love.

Claudius is silly and destructive and a pain. He gets in the way at the worst times. He loves me so intensely that there’s hardly anything I do by myself anymore. He’s just so much, but what he’s just so much of is such a good thing that it feels like the world isn’t fit to contain it.