Waffling On An Important Issue.

I love the dog.  Yes, I may have expressed the opposite sentiment here, and then been all wishy-washy about my official opinion here,  but new facts have been made available since I last went on record on this issue.  

Scary floating staircase.

Here's the deal.  Our dog is afraid of the floating staircase that isn't super cool now but will be once it's ripped down and a new one is built as part of the renovation!  I'm sure our staircase + giant baby gate at bottom will be featured on Houzz.  

Anyway, at his level, with a view onto the air behind the stairs, taking a step up is taking the risk that the stair won't be there and he will fall off an awful cliff built by his masters to test his intelligence.  In the two months we've lived here, he has made it up two stairs in five minutes, shaking like a leaf the entire time, before I coax him back down.  And by coax I mean tell him sternly to get down.  Good lord I give Cruella Devil a run for her fur on certain days.

Last night, we had a non-family member watch the baby for the first time.  When we arrived home, embarrassingly early, I asked for the details of the evening and since the dog was panting in my face asked if he had been much of a nuisance.

"He is such a great dog!" she said while I mentally begged to differ, "he sat right next to me while I gave [insert baby name here] his bottle and [baby] kept getting down to play with him."

"He was upstairs?!" I shouted incredulously.

"Yes, he came up when we went up for bedtime.  Doesn't he usually?  It seemed like the routine."

"No, he never goes up.  Was he terrified?" I asked, sure it took him a solid 20 to scale it.

"No.  He came right up."

At this point I hugged the dog even though I had on a clean shirt.  He conquered his paralyzing fear of the stairs to stay close to the relative stranger caring for the boy.  It melted my heart to realize that our hairy, smelly, way-too-in-your-personal-space Golden would walk off a cliff to protect the little boy.  

During this bout of affection, the dog wagged his tail and forgave me for excommunicating him from the family.  "Did you think I was going to let a new person be alone with our boy?" he seemed to ask, "I'm a Golden Retriever, not a cat.  This little boy is sorta my thing."

The dog is officially back in the family and my official stance will not change.

Touch my little boy and
things will get ugly fast.  Don't test me.