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Petra has already dropped to her knees and is now accepting hugs and kisses from Goliath, but soon Dave nudges his way in to take over. Petra looks so comfortable around the three dogs. Apparently, the dogs all plan to get along famously too—just as long as the people pay enough attention to them.
“You’ll want to get Gus an invisible fence collar. The HOA restrictions don’t allow any backyard fences to destroy the view of the pond. If he’s smart, he’ll pay attention to how far from the house the other dogs go. Dave will herd him back to the house if he messes up anyway. He’s pretty bossy that way. The fact that he’s only about a third their size won’t even occur to him.”
“What kind of dog is that?” Callum asks, pointing at Dave.
“He’s a miniature American shepherd, also known as a mini Aussie. They don’t come from Australia, though, despite the nickname. The breed was developed right here in the U.S.”
“What happened to his tail?”
“Most of them are born like this with a naturally docked tail.”
Petra speaks up and says, “I love all the colors in his coat. He’s so pretty.” She runs her hands through his silky coat and coos at him, “You’re a handsome boy, yes you are!” Dave is clearly eating up the attention, and I suddenly realize how much I would enjoy that same attentiveness from her.
After seeing that the dogs are all happy together, we head into the house where the three pups flop down on the living room carpet. We then go over the lease agreement and determine that Callum and Petra are both gainfully employed full-time. They fill out some standard forms for me that I’d downloaded and write me a couple of checks that clear immediately on my phone banking app. We decide to split the grocery costs three ways, except that Petra and I will take care of our own dog food. Having some money in the bank is such a relief.
Throughout the time that I walked them through the house and talked about the rent, my phone buzzed in my pocket with maybe a dozen more calls. I ignored each one, figuring they’d leave a voicemail; I thought it would be rude to accept calls from other prospective renters while we were clearly all getting along well. As expected, ten of them left messages, and I know I have to respond to them at least by text to let them know the house was rented. While Petra and Callum filled out the paperwork, I took down the ad from the site. This whole process was exceptionally easy, and I’m feeling confident I don’t have to look any further. I have a very good feeling about these two people.
“I’m looking forward to having you both move in,” I tell them happily. I’m so relieved.
“I’ll be back tomorrow morning with my stuff. And I wouldn’t mind doing the grocery shopping,” Callum tells us. “I actually like it.”
“That would be fantastic!” I say. “I’m fairly hopeless concerning food except for eating it.” That brings a smile their faces, and then we have a discussion of our favorite foods and give Callum an idea of things we don’t like as well. We’re all pretty adventurous it appears, and I take that as a good sign. Callum looks jazzed about doing the cooking. Luckily, no one has any serious peanut or shellfish allergies or anything like that. And we all agree that pizza and pineapple donotbelong together.
“We’ll have to rearrange a few things in the garage so all three cars fit, so maybe you can both help me with that in the morning. It’s not a lot of stuff—just a few things that need to be stored better. I was only planning on one extra car, but the HOA doesn’t like cars parked all the time on the street or driveway, and I’m sure you’ll both like your cars to be inside, especially when it snows.”
Petra nods in agreement and Callum says, “Sounds great.” He reaches for my hand to shake, saying, “See you in the morning.”
Once again, I notice how good his hand feels in mine, and give it an extra little squeeze. I swear his eyes light up at that. Finally, I can’t resist and say, “Nice shirt, by the way. Now I get it.”
Callum laughs good-naturedly and explains, “My sister gave this to me for my birthday. I don’t actually wear it very often, but everything I own was in the dryer when I left the house.”
Thinking that I wouldn’t mind kissing the cook at all, I give him a house key, he says thanks, and I’m left with Petra.
“When can you move in?” I ask her.
“Uh… now?”
I laugh at her eagerness. “Then let’s go get your car parked in the garage and bring in your stuff.” She looks so relieved, I have to ask, “Were you on super-bad terms with your former roommate or something?”
Rolling her eyes, she answers, “You have no idea. She practically tossed me out this morning and told me she was changing the locks and having professional cleaners come to get rid of the dog hair. It didn’t matter to her that I vacuumed every day.”
“Charming.”
As we stow the final boxes into Petra’s new bedroom, she tells me, “I’m so glad to be out of my former apartment. Fortunately, I didn’t have to live there very long. She hated it when I brought Gus home because he barked a couple of times, and she came unglued about it.”
I shrug and say, “Dogs bark. It’s a fact of life. If it gets too bad, though, we’ll work together to do some corrective training. We’ll manage it.” I haven’t heard a peep out of Gus so far, so he doesn’t seem like a big barker to me. “So, what kind of work hours do you keep? You said you work from home, right?”
“Yes. I try to keep the hours between nine and five, but I’m flexible. Working as a ghostwriter, sometimes I have phone calls at odd hours, but mostly I call the shots. Once in a while, I work late at night if I want to take the day off for some reason. It’s a pretty great gig.”
“That’s interesting. I’ll leave you to unpack now, but I’d love to hear more about that sometime.” She smiles and nods, looking at her pile of boxes and suitcases. I turn to leave, but then remember something. Facing her once again, I say, “We’ll need to get Gus an electric collar as soon as possible and have it set to the fence’s code. They’re expensive, but unless you trust him to never wander off, having one is essential.”
Sighing, she asks, “Can you show me where to order one online? I don’t even know him well enough to know if he’s a wanderer. We’d better get him one.”
“If you like, I can go pick it up for you. The company isn’t too far away, and that’s going to be a lot quicker than waiting to have someone send it to you. I can even take Gus along so they can fit it for his neck properly.”
“You’d go to that trouble for Gus and me?”
“I don’t want to worry about him, and he’ll need to be able to play outside with the other dogs. I’m happy to. I also need to have an extra key made because I was only planning on one extra person, so I can do that at the same time. You can just write me another check when we get back since I don’t know the exact cost.”
