It's the Dog.

I was sitting around watching “It’s me or the Dog” the other day. Is that chick Victoria something else or what? She makes it look so easy. She walks into a room with a snarling mean nasty monster of a dog, and at the end of the show, it’s nothing but a big ole sweetie pie little cuddle bunny. And all in 30 minutes or less to boot. Of course, in the process of turning the beast into a teddy bear she paints the owners as bumbling know nothing dolts that shouldn’t be roaming the streets alone let alone owning a dog. I’m fascinated by this show. I don’t rearrange my week just so I can watch it or anything. I mean, after all, it’s not Survivor. But if I’m channel surfing and it happens to be on, I gotta stop and watch it. I was REALLY late for work recently because I just had to find out just how she was going to handle two Dobermans. Dobermans, can you imagine? Two huge freaking Dobermans. How could I not watch?

I’ve sat through more than a couple of episodes. I got to thinking recently, Wow, this dog thing is easy and those people are just so dumb.” I got to thinking about owning a dog again and just how cool it would be. I watched enough of these dog shows, I know how to train a dog. I wouldn’t be like one of those dopey owners, my dog would be well trained. It’d come when I called, sit when told to sit and it definitely wouldn’t destroy the house or yard. Yeah, me and my dog. We’d be like peas and carrots. I even went and looked at a couple of puppies.

While I was looking at the puppies something hit me. The little voice in the back of my head started yelling. I don’t know how it had fallen asleep, but when it woke up it was panicked and it was yelling. It started yelling “STOP!!! WHAT ARE YOU CRAZY? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? DON’T YOU REMEMBER THE LAST TWO TIMES YOU TRIED TO OWN DOGS? DON’T YOU REMEMBER THE LIST OF THINGS YOU WON’T DO THREE TIMES?” When that little voice started going, I had to stop and reconsider the road I was about to stroll down. At this point my head started drifting away from the images of sitting by the camp fire with my trusted canine companion by my side and started remembering just what it meant to own one of these monsters. I've owned dogs before you know.

I’ve already talked about the time the dogs (I had two at the time) got loose in the house. If you recall the story, they destroyed the place. When I got home there was two feet of rumble throughout the entire house. There was poop on the dining room rug and the male must have started marking his territory or something because there was pee everywhere. And those two things ate everything of mine they could get at. They left Lisa’s stuff alone, but my stuff was destroyed. I lost three pairs of shoes, two leather belts a jacket (yeah, I should have hung it up) and fist full of silk ties (should have hung them up too). This ended up being the first time we had to have a dumpster delivered.

I had been given advice when I got these dogs. In hindsight it was really bad advice.  I only tried to listen to it once.   I was told that a dog only understands two things, pain and pleasure. When they are good, you gotta give them pleasure, but when bad, they need to experience some pain. Well, as you can imagine, this was bad.  I talk'n really bad.  I'm talk'n almost indescribably bad.  Lisa would kill me and the dogs if she saw this mess.  Trust me though, I was gonna go first.  Anyway, these were some dogs that needed some punishment. I ended up chasing the them around the house. I finally cornered the male. I grabbed him under the front legs and picked him up. All the while I was scolding him. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, OK, I was yelling. So I’m holding this dog up to my face and I’m yelling at it. Why would you yell at a dog? Oh, I don’t know. They don’t understand what you are saying anyway. As I was yelling I started to smell and taste something funny.  All of a sudden I realized I was getting wet too. I looked down to see that the dog was peeing on my chest. And not just a little squirt either. This was a full on, I gotta go pee, pee. I dropped the dog and went running for the bathroom. I almost puked. I jumped in the shower fully dressed. There I was, standing in the shower in a suit and tie still wearing my shoes sucking on a bottle of mouthwash trying as best I could to get the taste of dog urine out of my mouth.  No amount on Listerine would  help. 

Then I started thinking about the time the female (is it OK to call this one a BITCH???) peed on my feet. I was watching TV. I didn’t have the remote, so I had pulled the rocking chair up close to the TV so I wouldn’t have to get up to channel surf. Now, this dog wouldn’t come anywhere near me. If I came into a room, it went out (kind of like Lisa, OOOOPs, did I say that out loud?). If I opened the door to let her in or out, she’d wait for me to move before she went through. And there wasn’t a chance in hell she would ever come if I called. I’m sitting in the rocking chair watching TV when out of the blue the bitch walked up and put her head in my lap. She laid her head on my legs and looked up at me with those big brown eyes, and just sat there. I thought to myself “WOW, what brought this on? Maybe she’s jealous of Max (the male).” Max had been lying beside the chair and I had been scratching his back. So anyway, she’s just sitting there on my feet with her head in my lap looking at me with those big brown puppydog eyes. I stopped scratching Max and started scratching her head. After about a minute I started to feel something warm. Took me a second before it realized what it was. That damn dog was peeing on my feet. That BITCH sat on my feet, and then peed on my shoes. Needless to say, the dog had cost me another pair of shoes, and just a little bit a dignity.

Anyway, I’m looking at the puppies and I’m thinking. I’m thinking that the kinds of situations that I’ve just been thinking about can be corrected with proper training. I’m thinking, “Hey, I’ve seen Victoria do it, I can too. The last time, I didn’t really know how to train a dog. Now I do. Victoria is a good teacher, and beside those other people are stupid. I’m not stupid.” Then another thought popped into my head.

So, I had two dogs. They were mutts. They were a mix of Collie, Husky and German Sheppard. The male looked like a Sheppard with a thick coat. The female looked like a Husky with a strawberry blond coat. The male was about 75 lbs, the female was about 60. These dogs were strong and they liked to pull. Hey, it was in their blood, they were part Husky. I used to tie them to cinder blocks and let them pull the blocks around the yard. The heavier the load, the more they seemed to like it. Besides, it slowed down the female enough that when she didn’t come when I called, I could go get her. I quickly learned that if I only tied one block to her, she could still out run me. Anyway, the point is, these dogs were strong, and they really liked to pull.

One day I was walking the dogs. They were on the leash. I had both leashes wrapped around one wrist. As we were walking by the conservation area, the dogs alerted to something. The conservation area was wet lands. Swamp really. There was maybe 6 to 8 feet of embankment sloping down into prickers and briars that comprised most of the conservation land. Both dogs alerted at the same time. They were standing at the top of the embankment and they were very intently peering into the swamp. I went up next to the dogs, but I couldn’t see anything. Oh, I could hear something, but I couldn’t see anything. So I started very softly saying to the dogs “what’s zat?” “What iz zit” “Do you see anything, whatszat” All the while, you could just feel the dogs tensing up. Their little feet were starting to dance and they were twitching. You could taste it, these dogs wanted at whatever it was that was making that rustling noise. I’m standing at the top of the embankment with these two Husky mix digs strapped to my wrist trying to get them all excited. I’m up there still saying brilliant things like “whatszat” when I heard a stick snap. Without thinking, as soon as that little stick snapped I shouted “GO GIT IT”. And with that, those dogs took off.

The dogs were off  like a shot. They were just waiting for permission to go. When they got it, they went. I had a combined almost 150 lbs of sled dog running down hill after whatever was making that noise dragging me by the wrist with them. I wasn’t even slowing them down. Did I mention the thorns and prickers and briars and stickers and burrs and muck that made up the swamp/conservation land? Think of a rose bush.  Now picture one that covers a couple of acres.  It was like that.  The dogs dragged me down the slope, into the swamp and through about 100 feet of briar patch before I could get them stopped. I stopped in about a foot of muck and in the middle of a thorn bush. I looked around to survey where I was. There were prickers in every direction as far as the eye could see. I had no choice but to go back the way I had come. It took me less than 10 seconds to get into the middle of the swamp, and about 45 minutes to get out. Of course, while I was trying to get out, the dogs were still trying to go after whatever had drawn them into the swamp in the first place. Eventually I just dropped the leashes. To hell with the dogs, let them find their own way out. I got out of the swamp and headed home. About two hours later the dogs showed up. I have no idea if they ever got at what they were after. They seemed pretty happy though. To add insult to injury, I had to bathe them both to get all the muck out of their fur. I spent a couple of hours combing the burrs out too.

As I was looking at the puppies I had an epiphany. If I was seriuosly considering getting another dog, well I guess I am as stupid as those people on the show.  It doesn’t matter what little Ms Vicky can do or how well she can handle her dogs. I’m not a dog person. Thank god the little man in the back of my head finally woke up and started yelling. I don’t know why it took so long for me to hear him. Wow, I was that close to starting my list of things I won’t do four times. Again.