So, here's the thing I don't understand.


(Okay, so it's not the only thing I don't understand. There are lots of things I don't understand -- advanced calculus, chaos theory, people who watch 'Everybody Loves Raymond'... but I'm just saying -- this is one thing I don't understand. Just one more for the pile.)


Anyway, here's the thing: there are three large mammals living in our house -- me, my wife, and the dog. There are other, smaller mammals -- i.e., mice -- that seem to also live here, or at least visit from time to time, but they don't count, because we're trying hard to kill the little fuckers. So, forget them. It's just three mammals that we generally don't want to die anytime soon, unless maybe one of them pees on the couch. So that's one part.


Then, there are my pants. My pants are the other part. Large mammals living in my house, and my pants. Those are the two parts. Try and keep up, now -- this is where it all comes together.


So, three mammals living in the house. And my pants, which may either be on my body or off. Those are the variables. And there are thus the following possible situations with regard to drool, in decreasing order of goodness:


1) My wife's drool on my pants while I'm wearing them
Comments: This is exceptionally good. At worst, it means that she's resting on my lap or my legs, sleeping -- and drooling -- peacefully. Which is very cute, of course. And at best... well, look, folks, let's face it -- there are only so many ways somebody else's drool can get on your pants. Oh, mama!


2) My wife's drool on my pants while I'm not wearing them

Comments: Okay, not nearly as good, except possibly from a kinky, weird 'jeans-licking' sort of fetish perspective. And I don't think I have that particular fetish. At least, it's never come up before. The hot fudge fetish, sure. The one with the busty twins and the fluffy pillows in a Jiffy Lube -- yeah, that one, too. But I'm not sure about the 'slobbering all over the pants' one. On the other hand, anytime there's a woman drooling and I'm not wearing my pants... that has to be pretty good, right?


3) My drool on my pants while I'm wearing them
Comments: Frankly, it's pretty clear that this is rarely 'good', per se. If I'm drooling on my own damned pants, I'm likely in no condition to do anything useful with whatever it is I'm drooling about, whether it's food, or booze, or a large mammal of some kind. Nuff said.


4) My drool on my pants while I'm not wearing them

Comments: Pretty much see #3 above, except add to it that I've apparently decided at some point to take my pants off during the process. Nuffer said, I think. Nuffer said, indeed.


5) My dog's drool on my pants while I'm wearing them
Comments: There's no possible way this can be good. The dog's either trying to eat my food, working on taking a bite out of me, or -- most often -- just drooling indiscriminately all over everything, with my pants just happening to be in the line of slobber. The only good thing about this situation is that if I'm wearing the pants, then I'm usually in a position to nip the drooly dipshit in the bud before they're soaked completely.


6) My dog's drool on my pants while I'm not wearing them

Comments: Again, see above. I typically see that this has happened in the aftermath, when my pants are slobber-soaked and dripping with drool. Some people might tell me to stop leaving my pants on the floor. Personally, I think I should just have the dog's saliva glands removed. Either way -- I don't care. So long as the pants are finally safe.


So. Now that you understand the possibilities -- and my strong opinions about which ones are preferable -- my question is this:


Why -- why, oh why -- do these things occur with exactly the opposite frequency from what I want?


Why is it that I find dog-slobbered pants lying around my room three or four times a week, and find myself wearing wife-slobbered pants once in a blue moon? And how is it that I drool on my own pants with haunting regularity? And for that matter, how the hell does the dog even have so much slobber to begin with? She's the tiniest of the three of us, but that bitch could out-drool my wife and I together in a contest. Put a steak in front of the dog, and you could fricking surf the wave from the kitchen to the living room. Freaky.


Anyway, I'm just saying. I don't mind being drooled on -- it just needs to be the right kind of drool, at the right kind of time. And it almost never is. Who knew slobber could be so persnickety?

Some days when I go to work, I take our pooch to 'doggy day care'. I do this because she owns our asses. My wife and I rescued the mutt from the pound, gave her a fluffy bed and three square meals of ground-up horse meat and cereal filler a day, but still she owns our asses. Like we owe her, or something.


(Maybe she's still mad about that whole 'spaying' thing. Jeez, so we paid a guy to yank out your ovaries. How long can you hold a grudge? Get over it already.)


On days when I don't take the dog with me, she stays home -- and sleeps on the couch, like she's not supposed to. She probably also scoots her fuzzy ass all over our bed pillows, to teach us a lesson. I wouldn't be surprised to come home early one day, and find the bitch throwing a canine kegger of some kind, with drunken German shepherds, loose-moraled retrievers, and naked poodles passed out on the lawn. I wouldn't put it past her.


Anyway, on days where she's home alone, I make sure to leave the mutt some peanut butter stuffed inside her favorite rubber toy. Why? Because she owns our asses, like I said.


Also, she's a pit bull. And when she can sense that I'm about to leave the house, she cocks her fuzzy little head and wags at me very reasonably, with a look that says:


'I've decided, for the moment, not to rip your nose off your face and eat it. I think that deserves a tasty treat in compensation.


Of course, if you'd rather sort through dog turds for a week trying to find bits of your honker to sew back on, you just let me know. I'll be over here with the fangs and the claws. Your choice.'


Peanut butter she wants; peanut butter she gets. It keeps her happy, and I do enjoy having something other than my upper lip to hold up my sunglasses. So it works out for everyone.


There's another party to this little dance, though. The missus and I work some pretty long hours, so we have a walker come in to check on the pooch while we're gone. After a couple of years of this arrangement, one thing is clear -- the dog owns her ass, too. The walker is fully on-board with the peanut-butter-in-the-toy bribe, and unfailingly leaves a second snack for the dog when she leaves. Apparently, the walker's rather attached to her schnozz, too.


So, here's the thing. Today, I left the mutt home as usual, with her peanut butter breakfast. When I got home, I saw a note from the walker. Usually these are along the lines of:


''Hi -- I walked the dog. She decided not to eat me. Have a great weekend.'


Today's note, however, read:


'Hi -- I'm filling in for the regular walker. I couldn't find your dog's toy, so I gave her kibble from her food bowl as a treat.'


Uh oh.


I fully expected to find the replacement walker's mangled, noseless body in the yard somewhere. Regular food doesn't count as a 'treat' -- hell, that doesn't even work on people. When you reward yourself for acing a test or getting a promotion or going a whole day without drinking, you eat ice cream or cookies or something special. You don't reach for the saltine crackers or the frozen peas. That's just crazy.


I could just see my dog -- that's my pit bull dog, remember -- sitting expectantly on the kitchen linoleum, waiting for her peanut buttery treat.


And then this strange woman in our house walks past the PB toy under the couch...


('Oh, nuh-uh. You get your ass back there and fish that thing out, miss thang.')


...and reaches into the food bowl sitting in the kitchen...


('Yo, I don't see no peanut butter in that dish, lady. Don't you make me come over there.')


...and pulls out chunks of dry Alpo, like it's some kind of candy...


('Bitch, I know you ain't gonna feed me that.')


...stuffs the kibble in the dog's mouth, and leaves.


('OH NO YOU DI'N'T!!!')


I'm guessing the woman got out before the dog knew what happened. At the very least, the mutt would've piddled on her pants leg in protest. Or maybe she knows enough to blame me, since I'm the one who pays the walker in the first place.


I don't know. But I'm sleeping with one nostril open tonight, just in case. Hell hath no fury like a peanut butter-less bitch scorned. Eep.

Our dog is a douchebag.


Now, I could back that up in many ways, citing examples and video evidence, where necessary. I could cross-reference multiple posts on this site, and all sorts of incriminating pictures that have never seen the light of day. But for now, I'm simply going to describe her nightly routine. That alone should be convincing enough.


We've provided the dog her own blanket, which we keep on the living room carpet. And when I say 'provided', I actually mean 'caught her sleeping on enough times to never want to touch it again, so we chucked it into the floor for good'. And when I say 'her own blanket', I mean 'four of the damned things that she's sullied with her nasty horsemeat drool'. She doesn't quite have a blanket in every room -- yet -- but the bitch is close. A princess, she is. A smelly, slobbery, furry, loopy little princess. Think Paris Hilton with more back hair.


Anyway, she's got a special little game she plays with the living room blanket. Most evenings, the blanket is stretched out over the rug -- because the wife and I run a tight ship, and we're not going to stand for a crumpled bunch of linen on the living room floor, dammit. In other words -- if my wife hasn't fluffed the blanket, it's in a pile in the middle of the floor. You guys know how that works around the ol' house.


Now, around eight o'clock, and usually when only one of us is home, the dog will decide she needs to be under said blanket. So she'll paw at the edges, apparently believing in her tiny little brain that pulling the blanket towards her will magically lift a corner into the air. I don't know what kind of Houdini shit she's been watching on TV, but it doesn't work that way in my world, what with the laws of physics and all.


So, at best, the dog manages to scrunch the blanket back into a messy little ball. Which I get blamed for. Fuzzy little bitch.


The only way to stop the scratching and pawing, of course, is to walk over, lift the blanket, and tuck the dog underneath it. That's what she wants. Wintertime, summer, it doesn't matter. It could be one hundred and nineteen degrees, with the blanket actually melting into her fur, but that's what she wants. It's her little doggie schtick, apparently.


So, is that the end of the game? No. That's way too easy, and eight in the evening is far too early for the dog to sleep peacefully and faithfully at our feetses. No, the first round of the game usually lasts about three minutes. At that point, something will trigger the pooch -- one of us humans coming home, or getting off the couch, or the phone ringing, or a butterfly flapping its stupid goddamned wings in Bangladesh, for all I know -- and the dog will stand up and investigate the disturbance. As best as a dog can, at least, with a brain the size of a raisin and a blanket over her head.


Eventually, after much tripping and shaking, she'll free herself from the blanket -- leaving it, naturally, in a messy pile on the floor. And once she's satisfied that the sky isn't falling and we're still here, available to feed her Snausages on demand, she'll want to be back under the blanket. And so the cycle of the doggy douchebaggery starts anew.


Most nights, it takes maybe three or four tries to get her settled in for good. I don't know whether she falls asleep in there, or just stops giving a damn about what we're up to, but by eleven o'clock, she's usually pretty immobile. And by the time I hustle her off to bed, a couple of hours later, she's damned near immovable. It takes a good ten minutes to get her out, up the stairs, and settled into her spot in the bedroom. On the extra pillows that she slept on for three months before we 'provided' those to her, too.


You know, I take it back. Even that Hilton bitch doesn't get this kind of royal treatment. Jesus.

Not long ago, my wife attended a conference. One of the speakers -- or sponsors or hosts or strippers or something; I wasn't really listening -- was from Aflac. The insurance people. With the commercials. You know the ones.


This Aflac person apparently came bearing gifts, and so my wife returned home with a small plush doll of a duck, about eight inches tall. It's wearing sunglasses and an 'old man hat', and when you squeeze its tummy, a voice says:


'Aflac! Aflac!! AAAAAAAAFFFF! LAAAAAAAACK!!'


This noisy duck is now my dog's new nemesis. From the very first squeeze, the mutt has been mesmerized. The duck is sitting on a shelf in the living room, just above the dog's eye level. So she sits and stares it down, just daring it to pipe up. One measly peep, and she'll rip it wing from wing. Or slobber all over it and drop it in the toilet, whichever's easier.


Clearly, the dog is an idiot.


Honestly, how moronic do you have to be to obsess over some cutesy little trinket that only knows one line? Sure, sure, I had that incident last summer with the 'action figure' with the recording of 'This one time, at band camp...' I won't tell you where I had to squeeze it to make it talk, or exactly how I ended up breaking it. But that was the best. Birthday. Weekend. Ever.


Back to the dog. And the duck.


I fully expect to come home one day to find the duck gone. There'll be fake fuzzy feathers all over the floor, and a little chip in the corner wheezing, 'Ellllfff... fffllleeeccckkk'. Two days later, the dog'll shit the sunglasses, and we'll close the book on this chapter of the dog's jackass obsessions.


Until somebody gives us some new doll that says, 'Is it in you?' or 'Can you hear me now?' or 'Yaaaa-hoooooowoooo!!' And if I ever get my hands on one that makes that creepy 'zoom zoom noise, I'll feed it to the bitch myself.

I own a pit bull. At least, she looks like a pit bull. My wife and I adopted her from the pound, so there's no way to say for certain. The pooch is smallish -- forty pounds or so -- but she's got the square head, the powerful jaws, and the stocky stance of a pit.


She's also a big goofy dork.


She loves people, gets along with (most) other dogs, and is far more enthusiastic and good-natured than the vast majority of dogs I've encountered. Or people, for that matter. Including me. If I wagged my tail as much as my mutt does, I'd have three slipped discs and need an asscheek transplant by now.


I like to say that my dog wouldn't hurt a fly -- unless the fly happened to be made out of Snausages, or some other tasty meat-like material. Given the events that transpired last night, it seems I need to append 'or rawhide chew toys' to the end of that line.


These specimens [link] are known as 'chew flips'. They're made from rawhide, which as I understand it is made from layers of skin stripped from some unfortunate animal or other. Which animal? I try not to think too hard about that. Pigs? Horses? James Gandolfini? I don't really need the details.


The important bit to know is that somebody peels these bits off some beastie, cleans them, shaves them, sterilizes them to some minimal degree of safety, and -- in most cases -- bastes them in a concoction meant to taste like peanut butter. Or beef juices. Or chicken gravy. Or cat innards. Different bastes for different tastes, I suppose.


From what I've seen in my mutt, this last step is wholly unnecessary. She goes nuts for these chew flips, and subtleties in the various flavors be damned. You could dip one in a fresh puddle of yak whiz, simmer it in sulfur sauce, bury it in a compost pile, and she'd still gnaw off her own paw to get at the thing. Whatever animal they make these 'chew flips' from must be smuggling dognip under its skin.


We give the dog one or two of these treats a day -- partly because we love her, and partly because she often deserves a tasty reward. But mostly because we're afraid if we hold out, she'll bite off our faces while we're sleeping. She is a pit bull, after all. Bitch can't be looking soft in front of the pack, now.


Many mornings, I'll feed the mutt a chew flip while I'm getting ready for work. I figure it's a nice way to start the pooch's day -- plus, it keeps her from staring at my shameful nakedness when I get out of the shower. And it's a great way to say 'Thank you for not eating my face off during the night!'


(Some people would just send a card. I prefer the personal touch. Call me old-fashioned.)


Yesterday morning, that's exactly what went down. Only in this case, the chew flip was rather large, and I was rushing out the door to make a meeting at the office. So when I left, the chew flip was still in play, only half-eaten. This happens sometimes; I didn't give it a second thought.


Until I got home.


I arrived back to the cozy confines of my house after a long day of work to find bits of foam strewn in the entryway. I froze, trying to remember whether I'd remembered to hide the kitchen trash can before I left. The dog will sometimes smell some tasty decomposing bit of food or other in the can and carry it through the house in triumph. It's not enough to simply eat what you find rotting in the garbage; apparently, you have to do a few victory laps through the living room first. I love my dog, but she's not exactly the perkiest pair of nipples in the porno, if you get my drift.


At any rate, I was sure I'd put the trash away that morning. Also, I couldn't remember discarding any foam or foam-containing products recently, so I ventured further into the house, afraid at what might be waiting. In the foyer, I found the dog. From her darting eyes and nervous, apologetic wag, I knew she was guilty of something. My suspicions were confirmed when, upon seeing me, she jetted up the stairs and made herself scarce. That's a bad sign. A very bad sign. She wreaks all sorts of havoc with seemingly no conscience whatsoever. If she knows she's been bad already? Good lord. Get me a hazmat suit and a sturdy shovel -- this isn't going to be pretty.


And it wasn't.


In the living room, I saw the couch. Or rather, the remains of the couch. Strips of green fabric were littered across the room, and chunks of foam ripped from the guts of the beast were everywhere. The frame of the couch, usually backed against a wall, was pushed at a sixty-degree angle into the center of the room, where it had gotten tangled with the carpet and wedged tight. When I finally extricated the crippled legs of the sofa from the rug and lifted it to assess the damage, I saw it. Sitting under the center of the couch, lonely and pristine, was the flat, pale form of the half-eaten rawhide chew flip from that morning.


The dog had lost it under the furniture, and gone positively poochy postal trying to get it out. Which she couldn't, once she'd jammed the couch against the rug and the wall. Evidently, that's when she decided to dig her way through the couch to get at the treat. And with a couple more hours of work, she just might have made it. You couldn't drive a truck through the hole she made in that couch, but you could pedal a tricycle into it for certain. That thing was shredded.


So, I learned three lessons last night. First, I learned the dog does have some kind of rudimentary conscience. If she's really screwed up, she can wrap that pea brain of hers around the consequences before the shit hits the fan, and get the hell out of Dodge early. In this case, I was so stunned by the spectacle, I didn't really even punish her. I didn't lay a finger on her, I didn't yell at her -- hell, would you? The bitch just demolished a whole couch made of wood and metal and tear-resistant fabric. What chance does my tender flabby skin have against those claws and teeth? None, that's what. I'm not about to piss her off.


(On the other hand, I also didn't let her get at the chew flip she wanted, either. Considering she just went through eight hours of hell trying desperately to reach her treat, which she then saw me retrieve and discard, I'd say that's pretty punishing right there. That's like driving across three states to your favorite ice cream shop, only to find out it closed ten minutes before you arrived. Harsh.)


The second thing I learned is that the dog really loves those chew flips. I knew she liked them -- but I had no idea she liked them liked them. I mean, I like beer and sports and sex. Especially together, all at the same time. I'd like that a lot.


But am I willing to eat through a couch to get at it? Meh. That's an awful lot of trouble. I'd probably watch some TV or something instead.


Finally, of course, I learned that we need a new fricking couch. Or a new dog, and quite possibly both. Either way, I'm never leaving a live, undetonated chew flip alone with that mutt in the house again. It's obviously a recipe for disaster, disarray, and divan deconstruction. And now I'll take extra care to make sure one of those damned things never ends up under me. The last thing I need is to have my cushions ripped apart and my foam spilled all over the floor. Owie.