Here’s one thing I’m learning about small dogs, once they are housebroken and have the run of the house. They can disappear. Gus is an intense player and a passionate sleeper. When he is tired, he disappears, usually into a dark corner, behind a pile of shoes, or hidden in a pile of blankets on a coach.

He’s been known to crawl into an open cabinet in my study, and is sometimes snoring next to my feet. When he sleeps, he is out, and only the movement of the food dish can get him up and moving. He gets a lot of exercise here, and he takes his sleep very seriously. When he is in bed in the morning, one of us has to drag him off the blankets and to the stairway.

With a medium or large size dog, you always know where they are, and Red and Fate are on their feet the minute we get near a door – they are hoping for work and are excited, like a well-trained first responder. Gus gets up when he’s out of dreamland, sometimes I can hear him because Boston Terriers make the oddest noises, sometimes between a grunt, a snore, and an oink. Because of their short noses, they have strange breathing noises.

When Gus first slept near us, we thought a drunken truck driver had moved into the house and was asleep nearby. Yesterday, he simply vanished, and we looked all over the him. No luck. He is small, so we check, he could be locked in a closet or trapped in a large boot (he slept in one once.)

Finally, I thought to look on the sofa. Maria was sitting on one end reading, a soft pile of blankets was on the other. I heard a sight and burp and pulled one of the blankets up a bit, and there was Gus, dozing. I had the camera.