Rosie

My girlfriend was getting ready to go out and doing that last-minute search we all do. Phone, keys, bag, lipstick.

Except the lipstick was gone.

It wasn’t in the bathroom. Not in the makeup bag. Not in the jacket pocket. Not on any of the “definitely put it here” surfaces that somehow eat small objects.

“Have you seen my lipstick?” my girlfriend asked, half joking, half not. So I decided to search along.

We kept searching. We checked the hallway shelf. We checked the kitchen counter. We checked the sofa cushions like we were looking for a missing remote that was going to save humanity.

I can tell you, when my girlfriend loses something, you want her to find it.

And then she crouched down to look under the coffee table in the living room.

“Oh my god!!!”

Rosie was under the table. She’d tucked herself in there with the lipstick between her paws, gently chewing it like it was a bone or a Dentastick.

Her muzzle was pink like she’d been kissed by a paint roller.

Her paws were worse. Two little rosy footprints. Like she’d been doing arts and crafts.

My girlfriend absolutely burst out laughing, because honestly… it was just a ridiculously funny sight.

Rosie looked up as if to say, “What? I’m busy.”

I tried to take it off her, but she did that classic Lab move where they go completely floppy and somehow become both a statue and a noodle at the same time. My girlfriend was laughing so hard she couldn’t help.

When we finally rescued the lipstick (it did not survive), the colour remained. We wiped her mouth. We wiped her paws. We used a damp cloth. Then another. Then the fancy pet wipes that are supposedly “for everything”. Nothing.

We still had to go out for our evening walk, so off we went with Rosie proudly trotting along on her brand new pink paws. And I swear, every neighbour we passed asked the exact same question: “What happened to her feet?” We must’ve explained the lipstick story five times in ten minutes.

Man, she wasn’t even ashamed, she was SO happy with all the attention she got!

By the next day it faded mostly. But now it's still a story that pops up every now and then for a good laugh!