Which plan was that again?

Winston is our newest dog. He is an English bulldog-pug mix. His previous owner had named him Oliver, my guess is after Oliver Swift, or, more simply, after the movie.

My wife was notified of Oliver’s availability through an internet site. She does volunteer work with a pug rescue organization. She showed pictures. Oliver was, I agreed, “a cute dog.”

My wife said, “His name is Oliver, but I think he needs another name. What do you think?”

I studied a picture. “Winston,” I said.

My wife agreed.

Yes, Winston, as in Winston Churchill. For those too young to remember, Winston Churchill was twice prime minister of Great Britain. He also discovered the Beatles while slumming in Liverpool. For bringing the Beatles into polite society, Churchill was voted out of Parliament.

We got our Winston last September. He was 11 months old and weighed 56 pounds. Winston has pug color and a definite bulldog’s face. Cute dog.

He also was a chewing dog. Anything wood. Rubber.

One morning I was not quick enough to head off Winston when I was leaving the bedroom. Winston leaped onto the bed and woke up my wife. As is said back home, I tell you what. That chunky dog can jump.

I was going to take him out, but my wife said it was okay if he stayed. “Close the bathroom door so he can’t get in there,” she said. I did.

The second or third time Winston got past me and onto the bed, he did get into something. He found my exercise bicycle, specifically the foam rubber wrappings on the horizontal floor pieces and the hard rubber pedals.  He left foam rubber and pieces of rubber on the floor.

He must have done additional chewing on the pedals, because earlier this week as I pedaled, I felt something poking my right foot, through my socks. The something was a small piece of hard rubber sticking up from the pedals.

“Well, this is fixable,” I said.

I did not know how many changes of plans I would have to make to ensure the fixability.

Plan A was to take kitchen scissors and cut the small sticky-up piece. Didn’t work. The piece was too small for the scissors to grasp.

Okay, we’ll go to Plan B. Get the nail file from my manicure stuff and file down the stick-up. Well, my wife had decided my living room lamp table was too crowded, so she moved the manicure set somewhere, and she was out of the house doing Homeowner Association business. I did not have a big file to use; we sold all my big files, and a lot of other things, before moving to Florida.

Plan C, then. I’ll get some duct tape from the garage. No good. We don’t have any duct tape. I questioned, “How can we not have any duct tape? We’ve got WD40.” But no duct tape.

Okay, we’ll go to Plan D. Find some other tape. After opening a tool box – Hooray! A roll of blue masking tape!

So now the exercise bike pedal has a pile of several small pieces of blue masking tape. If the stick-up piece of plastic works its way through the pieces, at least I know where the roll of tape is.

And maybe Winston will grow out of his chewing things up phase.