The Cabra Portal

If there's a door in the wall, and no one will go through it, is it still a door?

The patio beagle door got delivered and installed. Now comes the process of “training.”

When put in place, the panel was something that Tommy eyed suspiciously, then backed away from and growled at. He looked as confused as a Creationist in a planetarium. Tuppence, ever so much more brave, sniffed and walked away.

The instructions said to place yourself on the opposite side from the dog, hold the flap open, and using a treat entice the dog through. Here's the problem for a guy with a bum leg like mine. If I'm close enough to hold the flap up, I'm close enough for a dog to stick just a head and neck through. Snatch the treat, and run away from the scary hole in the wall. So, all that exercise really got me was a nipped finger or two.

I tried to reason with the Posse.

“Look, I got this so you can come and go to the back yard whenever you want, and the cold won't get in the house.”

Tommy said, “What's wrong with the automatic door opener we've been using?”

“You don't have an automatic door opener,” I said.

They both gave me a slow take that would have made Jack Benny, or Tommy Smothers, or any particular Python, proud. They were disgusted at how slow I am. You'll never feel slow until a beagle makes you feel slow.

We tried a few other maneuvers, and ways of both holding and tossing treats, and they would pass through the opening to get a treat, then run right back through it. They acted like I was opening a portal to a parallel, but very dangerous, universe. They'd zip through and right back as long as I held the flap open. No way a beagle nose, their most valuable possession, was going to touch and push a flap.

I tried reason yet again. “Look, you used the screen flap this summer, use the plastic flap now.”

“It's dangerous,” said Tommy. “If we can go out, the Chupacabra can come in.”

“What?”

“Do you WANT the Chupacabra to come in and suck all of our blood? Is this part of a plan to get rid of us.”

“First of all, a Chupacabra isn't real, it is an imaginary beast. Second, it lives in Texas and Mexico, not Indiana.”

The Posse spun and walked away from me. “If it's imaginary, how do you know where it lives?”

We've got some work to do.