Dog Tracks

Well, it's been two months almost to the hour now since I put Legal Lucy down.

It hasn't been easy but not nearly as tough as I thought it would be.

Sure, the first couple of days were filled with memories and a few tears, but there were plenty of smiles as well. She was the kind of dog that brought those smiles on and her death didn't change that.

I felt really guilty at first because her dying didn't bother me as much as CharlieGodammit's did until I figured out that Charlie was taken from us unexpectedly, but Lucy? She was ready and we surrendered her. Huge huge difference.

Yeah, I still miss her and think about her all the time, especially at one spot every morning when me and that asshole dog Jack are out for his morning energy dump. It's at the southeast corner of the property and as I rounded it heading back to the house, I used to holler, "Come on, Sis," and she'd come busting out of the brush and run up alongside of me, tail wagging and looking up with a big smile on her face. I still holler that every morning just to let her know I'm still thinking of her.

I still haven't taken any of her ashes and spread them in her favorites spots. I doubt I'll do it until Spring now seeing as that little dog always disliked the cold.

I know, how silly of me.

That's about all I have to say about my little girl dog. Long time readers know how much I loved her so there's no sense in repeating myself just for the sake of saying it.

Here's a picture of better days a couple three years ago:

Now, about that asshole dog Jack..... what can I say about him that's nice.....

Actually, he's settled down a hell of a lot since Lucy died. Like I said before, I didn't know if it's because he sensed something was wrong with me and Lisa, or if he missed Lucy, or maybe it was because I told him if he didn't settle the fuck down and get his shit together he was going to be next. 

It could've been any of the above reasons, but I'm also inclined to believe that a big part of it was simply that he grew up and got out of that teenaged dog stage - he's right at 4 years old now.

But really, not much has changed with him since I last wrote about the dogs but even the gradual changes have been pretty much positive. He has picked up a couple of weird habits though.

He still tries to kill the UPS man. A couple weeks ago I heard a horn honk out front and that asshole dog Jack went ballistic. I walked outside and the UPS driver didn't even try to get out of her truck until she saw me. "I take it you know about the dog, huh?"

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah Bubba, we all know about him."

I'm sorry, I had to giggle. She failed to see the humor in it. "Sign here."

For the most part, he's been pretty laid back lately. About the only time he gets hyper anymore is when we have company and that doesn't happen very often.

He still gets playful with me, but at least now I can calm him down after I get tired of it just by saying 'Easy' or 'That's enough'.

He still thinks it's funny to sneak up behind me and nip me on the ass or upper thigh though.

He only has two speeds when he's outside - dead stop and full throttle. He runs everywhere he goes and he can go from 0 to 30 mph in about 15 feet and I'm not fucking joking - he just explodes and then he's not where he was a half a second ago.

He runs in the house as well, but not nearly as fast, thank God.

I still don't know what he eats. I bought a 15 pound, that's right, a fifteen pound, bag of dogfood for him almost 2 months ago and he's just now finishing it off.

I mentioned that to Doc last time I took him in and he had remarked about how powerful he was. "Well, what in the world is he eating? Does he have a calf or child hidden down in the woods?"

"I don't know, Doc. I've wondered the same thing myself but none of the neighbors are complaining about missing kids or livestock."

That's not to say he doesn't eat anything - he just doesn't eat what's in his bowl. If I drop something on the floor, he's all over it. Half the time it doesn't even make it to the floor. He's the only dog I've ever had that can be sound asleep in the living room and hear a piece of cheese slide out of my hand and be on it before it hits the kitchen floor.

While he has settled down, one habit he picked up within just a couple days of Lucy dying is he's decided that he can now take her sleeping spot - right on my bed, and I can't break him of it. I can tell him no before I got to sleep and he'll look all dismayed and shit and go curl up on his pad, but when I wake up in the middle of the night to go piss, that motherfucker's stretched out on the bed - my bed, all 70 pounds of him. 

I guess I could lock him out of my room at night but I've always slept better at night knowing I have a large barking, biting dog between me and the boogeyman.

Besides, Lisa can't sleep behind a closed door, so if I kicked him out of my room, he'd just jump up on her bed and I'd much rather bitch about him being on my bed than listening to Lisa bitch about him being on her bed even though it's her fault he even sleeps in the house - that first winter after he showed up here, she insisted on bringing him in when it got below 40 degrees and now the dog thinks he belongs inside full time.

He's gotten a lot more affectionate. Up until a few months ago if I wanted to pet him, I'd have to go to him. Now it's not unusual at all for him to walk up and bury his nose in my crotch so I can give him a serious ear scratchin' 4-5 times a day. He'll even flop down and roll over right in front of me for a belly rub if he's feeling especially mellow. Unfortunately, he tends to do that as I'm walking and I've tripped over his dumb ass more than once.

Once every couple of days or so, that big SOB will decided he's a chihuahua or something and crawl up into my lap as I'm stretched out in my easy chair reading and wiggle around to where his head is down at my feet and his butt is on my chest, then he'll cock one leg up so I can belly rub him. And yeah, sometimes he'll gas the hell out of me.

Shit, occasionally he even comes when I call and that's really scary.

The dog ain't real bright, matter of fact he's downright stupid. He's 4 years old, been here for 3 and the only commands I've been able to teach him is sit, shake, and get the fuck out of my way. Every night for the past 3 years I tell him "down" so I can give him a good night belly rub and every night for the past 3 years I've had to pull his front legs out  from under him while he's sitting to get him to lay down.

He loves attention, he's just not willing to work for it.

That whole shaking thing though..... it took me 2 solid years to teach that dumbass how to shake, but once he learned it, he uses it for anything. If he wants attention, he sits in front of me and tries to shake. If he wants to go out, he'll stand at the door and try to shake with it. There's times we can be going the opposite direction in the house and he'll lift his paw and wave at me as he's going past. I've even seen that silly sonofabitch sit in front of a chicken and try to shake with it when I open the coop and let them out in the morning.

Speaking of chickens, I'm really surprised he leaves them alone. I don't know why he doesn't mess with them, but he doesn't. Anything else that he sees running from him, he'll chase it and knock it down, but not the chickens.

If he runs up on them, they'll squawk and run away, but if he just walks up on them they don't even get excited and neither does he.

 

He's always had a thing about laying behind my chair. When he first started coming in, he was fine with where the chair was at, but a few weeks ago we rearranged the living room and put both easy chairs about a foot and a half away from another wall, giving us room so we can recline in them.

That wasn't good enough for that asshole dog Jack. The first thing he did was start bumping and pushing them another foot and a half further away from the wall so it made a little room for him to stretch out in, and the next thing I know the damned dog had dragged both of his sleeping pads back behind my chair, making that area look like a fucking homeless camp with his raggedy-ass pads, skinned tennis balls and the stub ends of approximately 47 rawhide bones back there.

I can push those chairs back where I want them and leave the room. When I come back in 10 minutes later, he's pushed them back out where HE wants them.

But hey! as long as he's comfortable, right?

He's got his quirks though. Oh boy, does he have his quirks.

His tail was broken when he got hit by that UPS truck before he showed up here, and because of that it's fused in a weird shape and it doesn't wag. It's got a weird S shape with the bottom taking a hard left turn. 

Because of that, if he's feeling playful he can't just come to me wagging his tail, so now his thing is he'll walk up to me snapping his teeth. Don't ask me where he got that from, I haven't got a clue. I can see where it might be a little disconcerting to somebody that doesn't know him to have him walk up with his tail down and him popping his teeth at them.

I had him in the cab of the truck a little while back when I went into the store for a can of Copenhagen, and when he saw me coming out he started that snapping shit, throwing in a few growls and some barks for good measure. As I got to the truck, a woman in the beater car next to me said, "Mister, you better leave that truck alone, that dog's gonna git ya," and I said, "Nah, it's cool, I ain't afraid of no damned dog," as I reached for the door handle. She damned near broke her arm trying to roll her window up and crawl into the back seat at the same time. I climbed into the truck, put the dog in a headlock and commenced to give him a noogie while the woman next to us gaped at us, her uppers almost falling out of her mouf.

He's still afraid of guns. When he first showed up here, if I even picked up a gun he'd turn tail and run. But now with him now being my full time shadow, he's learned to compromise - if I'm working on or cleaning a gun, now he'll curl up in a tight ball at my feet and cover his eyes with a paw. If he can't see the gun, then the gun can't see him, right? So now I work on guns with one boot on and the other off so I can rub him down with my foot.

His latest quirk though is him attacking my water bottles and I'm pretty sure that's my doing.

Like I said, his spot is behind the chairs. One day 4-5 weeks ago I was sitting in my chair reading and he was flopped out just behind and off to the side of me, flat on his back, legs splayed out and snoring, dead to the world. Me being the nice guy that I am, I reached back and with one finger, started stroking that tender soft spot right under his solar plexus. He grunted and snuffled a little bit and then I noticed he was bustin' a chubby, slowly but surely. It was just creeping out. It would poke out, stop, poke out a little more, stop. Mesmerizing. Evidently I was turning him on. 

Okay. You know how sometimes you do shit without thinking but then it's like what the hell, what's done is done, no harm no foul, we'll all look back one day and laugh about this, right? Well, that was one of those moments. I picked up the half frozen bottle of water that I had just gotten out of the freezer and hadn't even opened yet and laid it right along his dick and red rocket thingy. Yes, I did. Looking back, I now realize I really should've given that some thought first. Don't ask me why I did it, I have no idea, it just seemed to be the thing to do at the time. I mean, I knew there was going to be a reaction, I just didn't realize just how big.

You ever see a 70 pound dog levitate 3 foot straight up? I have. It ain't pretty. While it was funnier than shit, the aftermath was a little messy.

One second that motherfucker was flat on his back sound asleep dreaming about fucking either me or that cute little boxer down the road, and in the blink of an eye he shot up a good 3 feet in the air, flipped over, landed on his feet facing the other direction, and took off at a dead run knocking over the table between the chairs sending my lamp, a Genuine Copenhagen spittoon full of used up ink pens, a couple screwdrivers and a few allen wrenches, my old man reading glasses, a handful of Werther's Originals (chewy caramel), 2 unpaid bills, a can of Copenhagen and last but not least, a half of a box of 45 ACP flying all over the damned place. Shrapnel was flying everywhere, man. A big Shout Out to the Khe Sanh Marines, I have a whole new respect for them.

Then that fucking mongrel ricocheted across the room and knocked the coffee table on its side, sending everything on that all over and under the couch/loveseat combo that we bought and never sit in.

Then as soon as he got his shit together and put two and two together which took a couple of seconds because remember, the dog is stupid, the fucker turned and attacked me, biting me dead off on the butt as I was trying to unass the area, then he grabbed the water bottle out of my hand and bit through it as he shook his head back and forth, worrying it and spraying ice water everywhere. In less than 3 seconds, he completely destroyed that room. It was fucking great, bro. I've seen barrooms after a brawl that looked better than my living room by the time I got him settled down. Nothing was broken, but damn, I don't know why.

Lisa hears the ruckus and comes in from outside and sees the living room with that asshole dog Jack growling in the corner and me collapsed in my chair rubbing my ass and laughing so hard I was choking. "WHAT IN THE HELL HAPPENED HERE?"

I couldn't catch my breath. "I don't know, man, fucking nightmare or something. I didn't do anything to him, I swear." Lisa glared at me, then turned and went back outside.

For a week or two after that, I couldn't even hold a bottle of water in my hand without him snapping and snarling. Seriously, I'd have to put him outside so I could get a bottle of water out of the icebox. 

He's calmed down some since - now I can drink from one and while he stays just out of reach and eyes me with suspicion the entire time, he doesn't freak out - but let me motion towards him with a bottle of anything in my hand and he's on his feet juking and jinking all over the room, barking and growling the whole time.

Oh shit, the best part: I keep the case of water I'm working on under the bar between the kitchen and the fancy dining room we never eat in. I keep 10 bottles in the icebox which is about what I go through a day, refilling it before I go to bed. 

Well, that night when I went to refill the refrigerator, the first bottle I grabbed was wet and it wasn't a leaker. That asshole gave it a squirt, just enough to show his disdain. Then before I had a chance to get up off the floor, that ballsy sonofabitch came in and sat right in front of me, ears up and everything, looking at me dead off in the eye like "Well, your move, asshole."

There was only one thing I could do. I snapped my finger and he flipped his paw up and we shook on it.

Even after attempting to freeze dry his dick, the dog is completely devoted to me. He adores Lisa, but he's definitely my dog. He can't stand for me to be out of his sight and follows me everywhere. If I go into town, Lisa says he hops up on my bed and looks out the window facing the road waiting until I get home. Sometimes that's a couple hours, depending on what all I have to do. If I go into a room and shut the door, he will lay down right outside the door until I come out. It's so bad that even when I'm at somebody else's house, I automatically look down when I come out of the bathroom so I don't trip over a dog.

Even though he's my dog, if Lisa goes out to sit on the back porch for some sun and fresh air, he has to be out there with her. He will go out and check all around the house to make sure there's no tweekers or lizards or whatever lurking about, then he'll lay down at her feet and guard her. 

And finally, his sense of time is outrageous. I usually go to bed right at 9 PM but there are occasions where I'll stay up a few minutes later to finish a chapter in my book or to finish a video. At 9 PM sharp, that dog is sitting in front of me with his ears up and an intense look on his face and he'll do that until I finish what I'm doing and get up. Even days when we switch to or from Daylight Savings Time, it's still 9 o'clock. I have no idea how he knows - even if he knew how to read a clock, we don't have one in the living room.

Anyway, that's the latest dog update.