Stupid Dog

I am ruled by my stupid dog.

This morning I got out of bed and there was Misty, spinning around like a malformed water bug. I looked down at her with disdain.

"You've already been outside," I said. Only one of my eyeballs were open. The other was crusted shut. My bladder was fully loaded and bumped up to the loading dock ready to hand-bombed into the great white porcelain bus.

The dog ran to the front door and spun there. If she could talk she would be saying

"gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now 

or I'm gonna pee on the floor, on the floor, right now" 

and it would be in a high-squeaky voice, not unlike American Idol's latest long-haired Bob Marley wannabe Deandre Brackensick. (Brackensick? Are you kidding me?)

Brackensick

I sighed. Heavily. "Really?" I asked.

The dog spun and looked sincere.

"Fine," I grumbled, "but you better get out there and go pee."

I waddled to the door, barely unable to see through my gummy eyelids, and opened the door for Her Royal Pain in the Ass.

"Go pee," I said, because the dog weighs seven pounds soaking wet and her brain is the size of a fava bean and you actually have to tell her to "go pee" or she'll just stand there like a dumb turd and stare at you.

I stood by the door, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, having to pee so bad my back teeth were ordering lifeboats. The dog stood on the front deck and looked at me, not a brain in her ever loving head. The fava bean had left the building.

"Git!" I hollered. "Go pee!"

She gave me a look that said I was torturing her and hopped down the porch steps and sniffed the closest snowbank. After 10 seconds of sniffing, she turned to see if I was still looking, then sniffed for a bit more. That done, she got a happy "I'm done!" look on her face and scampered up to the front door, wanting to be let in.

I was furious. "Get down there and go pee RIGHT NOW."

She got that hurt look on her face, like I was the world's meanest owner, and slunk back down to the snowbank. She didn't even sniff, just stared at me mournfully.

"GO PEE." I ordered, feeling like the evil dictator of a smallish country.

She took a few steps, sniffed half-heartedly at a pine cone and turned a baleful gaze back to me.

"oh please don't torture me anymore missus, i promise to be a good doggie, 

look how cute i am, why you be mean to cute doggie like me?"

Misty is such a creature of habit.

Someone gets out of bed, she has to go to the front door.

Someone shifts their position on the couch, she has to go to the front door.

Someone coughs, sneezes, farts, burps or breathes, she has to go to the front door.

It doesn't matter if she was outside two minutes earlier; if any of these things happen, she has to go outside.

Dave says it's my fault. "Why do you let her run you? She's a dog!"

True. You can't refute logic like that. (Whatever that means – she's a dog? That's supposed to make everything clear? Dave's theory of relativity – she's a dog.) But I am bound to the "what if" of the situation. What if she really has to have a crap? And what if she craps on the floor because I didn't let her out? Who would have to clean that crap up? Me, that's who.

Anyway, feck her. She wanted out so badly, she can stay there. Forever. Who cares if she freezes like a pupsicle? Who cares if she gets eaten by a bear? Bah. Stupid dog.

***

She's still at the front door. Staring at me. Big puppy dog eyes looking like she's the saddest dog of all the saddest dogs. Queen Sad Dog. Staring. I feel like I should let her in, like she has been punished enough.

Or I could make like she's a football and field goal her into the Muskoka River. *cue evil laugh*