Fin’s family has known for as long as they can remember that his favorite activity is to figure out something. He enjoys doing puzzles for himself to solve and gets very enthusiastic about each one.
Vee Thayer, Fin’s mother said: “Every day is a brand-new exciting adventure for him. It’s like Christmas morning every morning … He keeps himself busy — sometimes I’ll hear him trotting around in another room and wonder what he’s up to before deciding I probably don’t want to know.”
Fin constantly sets himself new challenges, but one of his favorites is convincing his mother to open the bathroom door when she is taking a shower.
Fin dislikes it for whatever reason when his mother uses the bathroom to take a shower. Maybe it is the splashing water, maybe it is the door being closed, maybe it is just that she’s been in there for so long. He does not like whatever it is, so he makes it his goal to pester his mother to reopen the door every time she takes a shower.
He offers presents to help her in this task, and each time they are different.
“From what my fiancé says, Fin brings a couple of items to the door while I’m in the shower to see if any of them will get me to open the door,” Thayer said. “Sometimes I’ll open it to find an assortment of items, other times it’ll just be one thing.”
Thayer was not entirely sure what was going on when it first began, but these days she looks forward to opening the door and seeing what Fin has chosen to bring her. Sometimes he offers things for the shower, like shampoo or a bathing suit. Sometimes they are unexpected.
“Some of my favorite things he’s brought me have been duct tape, tongs, shampoo, socks, his bed, a bowl of his food, hangers, and a pack of Post,” Thayer said. “When I open the door, I always say thank you and check out each item. His face is the cutest when the door opens — it’s a mixture of pride and concern, like, ‘Oh jeez, I hope I brought the right thing!’”
Fin has created a similar, albeit significantly revised, puzzle involving his father.
“When he senses it’s about time for dog dad to get home from work, he’ll sit in a specific spot at the corner of the carpet in our living room and wait,” Thayer said. “The longer the wait, the more toys and items he’ll grab. It’s like he’s trying to find ‘the thing’ that will make his dad walk through the door.”
Fin never gets tired of trying to answer these riddles, even though he does it daily. He enjoys bringing things to his parents to entice them to open a door and join him for playtime once more. He and his parents like it, and he has no immediate plans to stop.
