One of our dogs, our pit bull mix Precious, has, in the words of an old radio-announcer’s practice script, a marked propensity toward procrastination and sloth. She seems uninterested in exercise, with one exception: when our neighbor to the north lets his dog Buddy out. Then Precious and Buddy will run up and down the length of our boundary fence for hours at a time, barking and yipping at one another as if the world were about to end. It might not accomplish anything, but it keeps Precious’s weight down. Given the way she eats, that’s important enough.
But lately Buddy hasn’t been out very much. The weather hasn’t been propitious for long outings for a small, short-single-coated dog. So Precious isn’t getting her exercise. However, she is getting her usual feedings. So she’s been “packing it on.” Which resulted in this exchange:
FWP: We have to cut Precious’s meals. She’s turning into a tub.
CSO: Richie has to get Buddy out more. He’s her rabbit at the greyhound track.FWP: You know, greyhounds can’t be very bright.
CSO: Hm? Why not?FWP: They exhaust themselves chasing a mechanical rabbit. After all this time the word should have gotten out that they’re not going to catch the rabbit, and it’s not real anyway!
CSO: Yeah, and they don’t even get a cut of the take.FWP: We can’t blame that on the greyhounds. They must have a lousy agent.
CSO: Well, okay, but who hired that agent?
FWP: Hm. Good point.
Absurd? Yes, especially at 4:30 AM EST. But that’s life at the Fortress of Crankitude for you.
I had a retired greyhound. 6 years old when we met. The most intelligent, eager to please, and affectionate animal I have ever met. We had another
ReplyDelete4 years. I miss her.
Man, pits are THE BEST dogs. Had to put my last one down a couple years ago, she was old and feeble and ready to go. It just about broke my heart; I ain't ashamed to admit I cried like a baby all the way home, and still miss her. Good old Cookie could look fearsome when she wanted, but she was just the sweetest, gentlest thing ever. Dumb as a box of hair, of course, but what the hell. Madeleine still talks about her with an audible ache in her voice, and well she might. Hell, even the cats sniffed around her bed and meowed after her for a few days, until I mustered the will to put the things away. The Hendrix household critters slept all curled up against her in a warm pile in her crate from the time they were kittens. Good, good old doggie, that Cookie.
ReplyDeleteThen again, maybe she wasn't all that dumb, at least sometimes. I lived in a house some years back that had a doggie-door letting out into the fenced backyard. I don't let the cats outside if I can help it, but the dogs were free to come and go as they liked. Well, came a time when I would come home, and the dogs would be out back in the fence, and the cats were out front. I just could NOT figure out how they were escaping. Then one day I caught Cookie at a neat little trick: she would go out the doggie door, turn around, and then hold the flap open with her nose until the cats would hop through and join in her quest for liberty, liebensraum, and unwary squirrels. I about died laughing at that one.