The little dog was very happy now that he’d relieved himself. He was in the middle of marking his spot at the park by scratching the grass with his back legs, when he saw what his two-legger was up to and let out a peal of barks in protest. With his hand encased in a plastic grocery bag, the old man leaned over and picked up the dog’s freshly excreted poop which was no bigger than the green goose droppings surrounding it. Continue reading “Rocky”
It’s a good thing I don’t have a job or else I’d look like the Thompson cat after being chased through the brambles behind old lady Tucker’s house. You two-leggers don’t appreciate the work that goes into looking good when your entire body is covered with fur. Sure, you all have a little tuft on top of your head, but that’s nothing compared to me, a full-figured, fluffy Samoyed with my arctic white fur shining as if glistening with morning dew. And I’m beginning to wonder if that tuft of yours might be a wig, since more and more of you are going without, mostly men, and when I smell the women’s hair it smells very similar to what my two-legger uses to clean up my wee-wee. I don’t know what you use to clean a wig but you might use that. You certainly wouldn’t use wee-wee cleaner on your own hair, or maybe you all would. The odd stuff you do never ceases to amaze me. Continue reading “Snake Oil”
It was a good day to fleece treats off the customers coming out of the 7-11. The hot weather brought them in for beer and chips, and I sat outside pretending to be someone’s pet dog by sitting calmly and looking like I was waiting for my master to return from inside the store with a six-pack for him and a bone for me. Pet dogs were safe to feed. Moms didn’t have to worry about their kids trying to talk them into bringing home the stray. Don’t feed the stray, they’d say, he’ll follow us home. I’d heard that one a lot. So I put on my act of belonging to someone and it worked for me. Continue reading “Strays”
I talk to my dogs. Anyone who has dogs talks to them. Even people without them talk to dogs when they meet them on the sidewalk or in Home Depot. When I talk to my dogs, I answer back for them in my dog voice.
“Do you want to lick the bucket?” I ask Sadie, my golden retriever, after finishing a tub of yogurt and setting it on the floor.
“You really need to ask that after all these years?” Sadie answers back in my dog voice. “For a dog trainer, you’re not very observant. Maybe we should practice. Go get some more buckets, ask me if I want to lick them, then put them on the floor.” Continue reading “Fat Shmat”
As a dog trainer these past ten years, I’ve walked a lot of miles with dogs of various shapes and sizes and if they’ve taught me anything it’s that sometimes things need to be peed on twice. If the first squirt doesn’t get it, double back and tag it again.
Then there are times when just going through the motions of lifting the hind leg and squirting nothing, not even the smallest dribble, works just as well as the power shot.
And water. Drink it every chance you get, no matter what the source.
Gnawing the Bone 