Three Chihuahuas Meet Behind Owner's Back

I have three chihuahuas, and I have come to accept that they are running a small organization out of my living room. I do not know the name of the organization. I am not on the board. I have applied for membership roughly forty times, mostly by sitting on the floor and offering cheese, and every single application has been quietly denied.

The first thing you should understand is that the meetings are real. They happen near the fireplace, which is apparently the boardroom, and they begin the instant I leave the room. I can be gone for approximately eleven seconds. That is enough. By the time I come back, all three of them are arranged in a tidy little semicircle, facing each other, very still, like a tribunal that has just decided something about me.

They never decide anything in my favor. I can tell.

The Agenda Is About Me

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For a long time I assumed the meetings were about dog things. Squirrels. The mailman. Whether the couch belongs to them now (it does). But the longer I watch, the more I am convinced the agenda is, and has always been, me.

Item one is my walking schedule, which they find unacceptable. Item two is the brand of food I have selected, which they have reviewed and HATED. Item three is the doorbell, a standing agenda item that never gets resolved because there is nothing to resolve, because the doorbell is a doorbell, but they bring it up at every session anyway, the way some people bring up a coworker they cannot stand.

There is no item four. By item four they are usually asleep. A chihuahua can adjourn a meeting faster than any creature on earth. One second it is a high-level summit, the next second all three of them are unconscious in a single beam of sunlight (the same beam, every day, roughly four square inches of sunlight that they apparently negotiated rights to), and the organization simply ceases to exist until the next time I make the mistake of going to the bathroom.

I am not making this up. I have stood in a hallway, holding a roll of paper towels, listening to three dogs hold what was clearly a vote.

The Roles Are Very Clear

Every organization needs structure, and mine has it. There is the one who runs the meeting. She weighs about five pounds and conducts herself like she weighs four hundred. When she enters the room, the other two get quiet, which is the only time chihuahuas are ever quiet, so I know it means something.

There is the one who agrees with everything. He has no opinions of his own. He simply looks back and forth between the other two, nodding, the canine equivalent of a guy in a meeting who says "to your point" forty times and contributes nothing. I love him. He is useless. These are not contradictions.

And there is the third one, who I am fairly certain is taking minutes. She watches me the whole time. She does not blink. Somewhere there is a document, and I am in it, and the document is not flattering. I am not making this up, although I admit I cannot produce the document, because she has hidden it (under the couch, with the eleven socks and the crayon).

The experts, for what it is worth, say dogs communicate through body language, scent, and vocalization, and that this lets them coordinate, resolve conflict, and even send signals when they are not in the same room. The experts present this as a charming fact about nature. I present it as evidence. My dogs have an entire communication system, they refuse to share the password, and they are using it to file reports.

What I Think They Are Discussing

I do not have transcripts. I have theories.

I believe a substantial portion of every meeting is dedicated to the question of treats, specifically the supply chain, specifically why I am in charge of it when I am so obviously bad at it. I believe there is a long-running grievance about the time I went on vacation, which from their perspective was a hostage situation that lasted approximately eleven thousand years (their estimate, not mine; I was gone a weekend). I believe at least once a week they discuss whether they could run the household better than I do, and I believe the answer they keep arriving at is yes.

The worst part is that they might be right. I am the only one in this house who has ever locked himself out. I am the only one who has cried at a commercial about a different dog. The three of them have never once made a bad decision, unless you count eating a crayon, which honestly I have done worse.

So when they meet, I do not interrupt anymore. I used to. I used to walk in and clap and say "hey, what's the meeting about," in the bright idiot voice people use on small dogs, and all three of them would look up at me with the specific patience of professionals being interrupted by the intern.

I Have Made My Peace

Here is where I am supposed to tell you the meetings are actually just dogs being dogs, that there is no conspiracy, that I am projecting a human structure onto three animals whose primary skill is sleeping in a pile. And sure. Maybe. A veterinarian would probably explain the whole thing in about ninety seconds, using the word "social bonding," and then bill me approximately two hundred dollars for the privilege of being told my dogs are normal.

But I have seen the semicircle. I have heard the vote. I have applied for membership forty times and been denied forty times, and the cheese budget alone should have bought me at least an observer seat by now.

So no. I think they are conspiring, and I think they are very organized, and I think the only reason I am still allowed to live here is that someone has to operate the can opener. That is my role in the organization. I am not on the board. I am the can opener. And honestly, given the alternative, I have decided to consider it a promotion.