The JMan and I have sculpted our lives to revolve, pathetically, around the interests of our dogs. It is for that reason that so many of my posts will likely feature tales of our dogs, their needs, utterances, bowel movements, and so on.
Occasionally, there's a weird sort of insane wisdom guiding the dogs' actions; a kind of rare gift often only appreciated by those who enjoy the entire Scary Movie saga. Today’s idiot dog lesson is:
(booming voice) BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!!!
We get our dogs rawhide bones to prevent them from eating the carpet, furniture, walls, baseboards, and ceilings that they encounter on a day to day basis. As it stands, our home currently looks like a nesting spot for feral, berserk power sanders. While the rawhide bones do diminish potentially costly damage, they also introduce a new problem: competition.
Everyone knows that little girls must always have what other little girls have. This is no different, apparently, in the animal kingdom. Our retarded children (we'll call them baby dog and butt plug), are never content until each has what the other has. Naturally, this results in a seemingly perpetual state of dissatisfaction in both creatures.
Upon giving each dog a shiny new rawhide chew, joy emanates from both pups, flooding the domicile. However, as the minutes pass, baby dog and butt plug discover that the chewing sound they're hearing is coming not only from their own mouths, and that the other has something. What is that thing? I think that's my thing! How did that thing get my thing while I'm still chewing on it? How can this be? Why would the world do this to meeeeeeee??? Ahhhhhh!!!!!
That's when the fighting starts.
Baby dog, still temporarily entranced by her own mindless gnawing, is rudely awakened by an unsettlingly familiar sound.
Hawonk! Haaaawwwwwwwaaaaaaaonnnnnnk!
Butt plug has positioned herself approximately six inches from baby dog, ears upright, hind in the air, body poised and ready to strike. Baby dog reacts the only way she knows how: she grumbles in a low, not immediately threatening growl. This only feeds the already growing fire in butt plug's belly. Her need for the other thing that's really her thing that the other thing has and oh god give me that thing hurtles her toward madness. She begins to shriek as loudly as she can.
Aaaarghck! Arrrrrrrrraghck!
This snaps baby dog out of her hypnotic chewing, and she, too, realizes that there is more than one bone to be had. Shoe doesn't simply want what the other thing has. No- she wants them both.
Baby dog stands, her 60 pound frame seething with hatred and jealousy, the hairs on her back standing on end. Fully mohawked, she lunges toward butt plug's chew.
That's when the open-mouthed tooth wrestle-ballet begins.
The dogs topple onto one another, mouths circling, teeth whirling. Hawnks, shrieks, and grumbles fill our tiny space. They tear around the room, colliding against the furniture and walls, each leaving their own precious chew vulnerable and alone. At some point, baby dog will decide she has had enough, and jumps up onto the couch to take cover from the snarling, hawking tooth ball of fury that is far meaner and faster than she is. She ends up behind mommeh or daddeh, and one of us gets to wear her as a stole for a while. We shout at butt plug and tell her to leave her older sister alone. We've had enough, we aver. Baby dog's eyes fill with feigned terror followed by relief. Butt plugs sulks for a moment, laying her enormously eared head onto her freakishly huge paws. A welcome silence embraces us all. Baby dog hides behind a cooing mommeh and daddeh, waiting.
It's all just a part of a master plan. Butt plug, now content with her apparent triumph over the slightly bigger baby dog, trots off to gather the prized thing that the other thing had for a while. As she bends down to collect it, baby dog leaps from her haven and grabs butt plug's chew. Butt plug, shocked and amazed, becomes enraged and shrieks once more. As she stands there, making far more noise than any dog her size should ever be able to make, baby dog has taken both chews and stored them safely in their crate. Baby dog sits at the entrance of the crate like a sentry. Head down, eyes up, and muscles tensed, she guards her booty. No one, not even mommeh or daddeh, can come close without incurring her rumble-filled wrath.
When night falls and stillness fills the house, baby dog waits patiently for butt plug to adjourn to our family bed. She then scarfs down both chews as quietly as she can.
The sun begins its slow ascent over the Austin skyline. Butt plug rests peacfully at the foot of our bed. Baby dog, content in the family room, belly full of pork-flavored animal skin, slowly opens her eyes. She stands. She finds her way onto the family bed where mommeh, daddeh, and other thing sleep soundly. Then she she begins to retch. A lot. While standing on the bedspread mommeh is borrowing from her parents. Mommeh and daddeh stir, wake, and spring into action just in time to see the vomit hit the carpet. And then again. All morning. She then lays there, looking miserable, wondering why we've done this to her and why in the hell we ever brought home the other thing which never stops hawonking at her and has ruined her life. Surely it's the other thing's fault that she feels the way the does. She seems to remember a time when she was contented, when she was free to chew as she pleased. She glares at butt plug from under the kitchen table. Then she vomits. Butt plug naps, still exhausted by the previous night's activity.
Half a day later, butt plug and baby dog feel refreshed. Happy and frisky, they become bored with watching mommeh and daddeh watching TV. The baseboards begins to look like raw, succulent filet minion...
The lesson in all this clear:
Do not pay any attention to the thing that the other thing has, or what it does with it. Doing so will only result in dental WWF, anguish, and puke.
