The Dog Must Go

Tom's dog annoys me. For one thing, she burrows under my covers, UNDER MY COVERS! The dogs are allowed to sleep above my covers and under the blanket I have laid out for them, but she insists upon getting between my sheets. And since she is disgustingly obese, and very talented at going limp, she is hard to move.

Also, she licks. Not in a "Oh I seem to have a spot of something on my paw I'd better clean it off" normal doggie kind of way, but in a disgustingly slurpy slobbery loud sort of way, all night. She licks her paws, her crotch (ugh, like I need to hear that), the other dog's face, the inside of the other dog's ears, the blankets, whatever is nearby, and she does this all night. It is nauseating to try to fall asleep to the sound of dog slobber being slopped all over the room. And at least three times a night she wakes me up crying because she's decided she can't get on the bed without permission, despite the fact that this has never been a rule and that she hops up on her own all the time.

The dog, probably from being so obese (a beagle built like an eggplant, not pretty), farts. Horrible mustard gas dog farts, with no warning and a loooooong hang-time. It's like invisible fumigators sneak into my home for no reason, periodically throughout the day. It's an especially pleasant experience during dinner, the smell of doggie diarrhea permeating the room. And when she goes into heat, which Tom won't pay to stop, she bleeds everywhere because she is TOO FAT TO REACH HER OWN GENITALS and therefore can't keep herself clean. In my opinion becoming too fat to reach your own genitals should be punishable by death, no matter the species unless you are some form of water-life. Whales can get away with it, but the gods at least gave elephants trunks to compensate. And I don't overfeed the dogs, it's just that this one eats for all of them.

She howls. At nothing. I have hung tarps around the dog pen so she can't see squirrels or bunnies or stray cats, whatever it was that she was barking at. Now she barks at the crinkling and fluttering of the tarps. And when she howls, the other dog howls too. Yes, I have three dogs, but MY dog, the little unobtrusive dog I brought into the relationship, doesn't sleep on the bed and can only yip, not howl. And I do mean howl, a basset hound baying that carries throughout the neighborhood and gets me phone calls. (Remember Roscoe's dog on The Dukes Of Hazzard?) And when I open the back door and tell her to SHUT THE FUCK UP, she goes down into the dog pen and lays down. I refuse to think of what she might lay in.

Tom, if you remember (and I do), originally got the dog to ride in the truck. It was only when he found out that CFI charged a $500 non-refundable deposit to keep a dog in their truck that she ended up at the house full-time. But when he bought his own truck, he took the annoying dog away. Life was once again good, sleep was once again uninterrupted and slobber-free. And now he says he's not sure he's taking her back out on the road. It seems he doesn't like having to walk her, or listen to her cry, or smell her intestines die. Now, I am a dog lover; I think it's cruel when people leave their dogs outside all the time. Hey, if you're going to get a pet, make it part of the family! But this dog will not survive living at my house full-time. I will stop trying to prevent her from running out the front door EVERY SINGLE TIME THE DOOR OPENS. I will let her escape and then not try to catch her, not call her name out, nothing. I will simply hope that she doesn't wander into traffic, that she finds her way home like she always has without worrying obsessively that she won't.

Yes, I feel for Tom. He has this whole "a boy and his dog" thing going on where he is the happy white kid and she is his loyal beagle, but the happy white kid in the movies doesn't leave the beagle home with his sister for weeks at a time. If that were the case it would be called "a girl and her animal cruelty charge".