Empty bed

This is an odd feeling!

I'm sitting at my computer, poking around in a program I'm debugging, and out of the corner of my eye I see a large, empty dog red panda bed.  I'm petting my dog, who is asleep in my lap, and I'm thinking of the dog and Tails making a cuddle-pile in that big bed yesterday.
I can't wait for Tails to come visit again, just to be in the room with her.  It's a sort of magical feeling that is so calming to me.


It's unusual for me to think this much about something I don't have any real attachment to yet.  It's something I learned recently, and I'm very grateful to the person that taught me how to trust so easily.
My cynicism is almost completely gone, and it is opening up a lot of opportunities to me.  The greatest one right now is that I'm able to relax and not put all manner of strange demands on this new fuzzball that is stalking the edges of my life.
I trust until I have a reason not to, and that makes everything so much simpler.

I wish I could spend more time with Tails to get to know her body language and signals better, but at the same time I think it's good that it's taking time.  I mean, I don't want to rush into anything.

On a related note, I still need a small table for her to have her food and water bowls on.  I don't want my dog to steal her food and create conflict, so it needs to be clearly defined as hers.  It obviously has to be quite near the floor, as she is not very big, but it needs to be far enough off the floor for my dog to realize it's not hers to eat and drink.  Tails' current owner had a great idea on how to solve this, so I'm going with that.  It'll be a table wide enough to slide over the bed when it's not in use, and that will leave plenty of space for all of Tails' need when she is here.  It'll be more than high enough to properly teach Jewell to stay off anything that is on it.

I also need a small book for taking notes on the progression of things when I'm nowhere near my computer.  I guess I could take notes on my phone, but I might want to do little drawings and maybe have Tails put some paw-prints in there as well.  I did look at some in a bookstore when I was out shopping for the bed for her, but I really don't have much to write in it yet, so I didn't buy one.  It's not like the bookstore is going to run out of books any day soon.  I'll be especially careful about writing down any disciplinary actions I take towards Tails so that I can be consistent about it, but I will also make notes there about what any current training goals might be and how we're getting along.  Most likely some of it will be echoed here, but some of it is just not the sort of thing that belongs on a blog.

All in all, it already feels strange that her bed is empty, and I can't wait to see her snuggle up in it again.