Untrained Dogs
I have three dogs, and I know what you’re thinking—what a nutcase. I mean, who has three dogs? One dog is very respectable, two dogs can be contained at least, but tell anyone that you’ve got three canines and they know you’ve gone off the deep end of the pool of life and there’s not a water noodle in sight.
And it’s not as if my dogs are trained. Listen, I’ve seen those dogs that are well trained. The golden retrievers that walk docilely by their owners’ sides and never think about attacking garbage trucks. The poodles that look askance when a piece of food is somehow dropped at their feet. The spaniels that never, ever, jump on the couch, let alone the bed. Those dogs are not my dogs. I’m not certain that those dogs are even related to my dogs.
Pickle, for instance. She’s the littlest dog—a fur-challenged, overweight, rat terrier that believes with all her tiny little brain that she can attack a moving garbage truck and win. And why shouldn’t she believe that garbage trucks cower at the sight of her? After all, she reins supreme at home. Our biggest dog, Max, a eighty pound mongrel, meekly defers to Pickle—who weighs all of sixteen pounds.
Max and Pickle were our only dogs for a full year. And then we—actually I—got Fritz. Fritz is where the whole dog thing went downhill. He’s the third dog, the middle dog, the least smart dog. There’s just no excuse for Fritz. But, see, there he was, a twenty-pound, orange terrier mutt that vaguely resembled a not-too-bright fox, sitting in the middle of the puppy cages at the Humane Society. The rest of the kennel was full and they’d put Fritz in the smaller puppy cages and he was surrounded by incontinent babies. He sat, resigned, and a little depressed, and when I looked at him he put one paw up to the bars as if to say, for god’s sake get me out of here.
So I took him home, and sadly, I’ve never regretted it. I’m a lunatic with three untrained dogs.
Cheers!
Elizabeth
www.elizabethhoyt.com
And that clips is v. funny! Pickle likes to sit in the window at the back of the car when I drive and bark at bicyclists, trucks, mailboxes . . . really just about anything. My hubby, BTW, used to not like “little rat dogs” (must be a male thing) but has since come around, especially since Fritz goes and hides under his chair during thunderstorms.
