We Have A Dog

We have a dog.

This sounds like a normal sentence; a run of the mill conversation piece.

But there’s something you need to understand about us and dogs right off the bat – ours are inevitably ill-behaved.  They are not mean, bitey, snarly things – but they are very jumpy, slobbery, generally obnoxious, and could easily be classified as certifiable morons. 

Moira is no exception to that rule – in fact, she may be the rule.  Moise (as we call her most often – like noise, with an M – as in more noise – which is fitting…), is almost definitely related to Marley, of “Marley and Me” fame – except that she’s a chocolate lab.  They must at the very least be second cousins thrice removed. We also affectionately call her Moiron.  Maybe this is verbal abuse, but she doesn’t seem to give a rip, so we continue to amuse ourselves thus.

She has charisma – which is a brilliantly kind way of stating that she does many stupid things with great flair.

Apparently, she will always dig holes.  Especially where we have planted new grass seed over the last hole she dug and we filled.  One day she dug a hole under the back deck.  The deck, just for reference’ sake, is close to the ground – very close to the ground – mere inches.  There is nothing under the deck but more dirt.  Apparently it was uncharted territory, because she dug right on under there, like a happy, fat, stupid little groundhog.  This went well for her for a week or two – she’d dig under there, and we’d see her beady eyes staring out at us, and hear her tail wagging happily against the tops of the boards.  She’d shimmy out, army style, with great gusto when she was bored, or after we’d called her 23 times to come inside.

But one day she got stuck. 

There was no way I was going to crawl in after her, and I figured she’d manage to extricate herself after a while – she’d been doing it regularly, after all.  There she was… waaaay under the porch, with her shining eyes gleaming out at me like two vacant LED lights.  I would say that she attempted to inch forward, but it was more like millimeter forward.

I walked back into the house.

“Well, she’s done it this time.”

“Just give her a few minutes,” said my husband with absolutely no concern in his voice.

“What if she really can’t get out?  What if we have to rip the boards out of the porch?”

“Then she can live under there,” he stated dryly.

I checked on her five minutes later.  Still stuck.

Ten minutes.

Twenty-two minutes.

She had managed to come forward about 2 feet.  I could just touch her collar.

I decided it probably wouldn’t be the best idea yet, to grab said collar, or her head. 

I also wasn’t about to grab her legs.  If I hurt one, she’d be given a home made splint, as I had no intention of going into 18 years of debt simply because she was dumber than a concrete block.

I tried coercing her with my most excited voice, treats, digging away the area a bit.

No dice.

Finally I took my husband’s advice and gave up. 

Apparently she heard a dog walking by from half a block away, because 15 minutes later, I looked outside, and she was tearing across the back yard like a Kentucky Derby champion. 

Figures.

The mother of one of the neighborhood kids recently stopped by to chat.  We stood by the fence in the back yard, next to our minivans in the driveway, batting away the flies and mosquitoes and ants and winged creatures that are overtaking Virginia in annoying swarms. 

At first, Moira’s head kept bouncing up from the other side of the fence. 

As far as I know, she doesn’t have a crack addiction, so it must have been all hyperactive excitement. 

When this failed to move us emotionally, she stuck her head down by the edge of the fence and managed to find a long garden stake that was directly beneath it.  It was as long as she is.  [At some point in the last 1.5 weeks, we had lost her red ball.  She was obsessed with her red ball, but now it’s gone.  Buried perhaps, or taken by one of the neighbor’s skulking cats, as revenge for the near heart failure she inflicts on them regularly as they try to slink along by the garage, short-cutting it to their own domain.] The loss of the red ball must have made her desperate at last, because she proudly carried that dumb garden stake around for the remainder of the time that we were outside.

After seeing the trick of the garden stake retrieval, I’m wondering if she didn’t somehow eat the Steelers garden flag that suddenly went missing from the other side of the fence six months ago.

Later in the evening, we were eating dinner, and she was sitting on the bench by the sliding glass doors.  We put the bench there so that she wouldn’t jump up on the door.  It does the job quite effectively, but now she’ll sit on it and stare mournfully at us, inducing the greatest amount of guilt possible. 

“Your dog is vulturing again,” said my husband. 

Indeed she is.

Snoopy has nothing on the hang-dog expression she’s gracing us with.

I walk over to the door, open it, and feed her a piece of my dinner roll. 

We’re all sitting around the table, chatting, eating dinner, and I happen to glance over again.  She’s licking the glass.

This is new.

What the crap.

Then she moves her lips back (yes, dogs have lips), and her teeth squeak and click gently on the glass.  She thought the white wooden “pane dividers” on the window were on her side.  She wanted to nibble them.  Because apparently the whale-sized case of rawhides, and a wooden garden stake aren’t enough for her.

She is given fresh food and water, and let in to her own little room, with her bed and her toys, and her windows that look out at the birds.  I don’t think she really notices the birds through the windows, but when it gets dark, she barks incessantly at her reflection in the glass.  I always wonder if she’ll mercifully go hoarse.  So far, no luck.  I say a prayer, yet again, that the neighbors won’t hate us.

On her back, she has a missing patch of hair.  She’s been shedding her winter coat for the past few weeks, but this is a true bald spot, because she scratched it on something – probably from getting stuck under the porch another day while I wasn’t watching.  The bald spot bothers me.  It makes her look more ridiculous than usual.  She’s a beautiful lab, but we do live in the south, and it’s often hot, and even when it isn’t hot, she runs around until she’s hyperventilating – either way, with her tongue hanging out of her mouth a good 90% of each day, the bald spot doesn’t help matters any.  It reminds me of Shenzi from the Lion King – or of the picture going around of the 4 types of labs.  Black lab, yellow lab, chocolate lab, meth lab.  She could be in serious competitive running for “meth lab” today.

I reach down and grab her ears gently and pet them, then kiss her soft head and look into her deep chocolate lab eyes.  There is no Old Yeller connection going on here.  She’s avoiding my gaze like a mis-behaving 8 year old, searching out of the corner of her eyes for a treat in my hand.  “Sit.”  I command.  She sits… then she lies down, just to get that out of the way too, and then she stands up again, all within 2 seconds, then commences bouncing around jubilantly.  I give her the treat after a few more attempts at sit and stay, because finally one sit sticks for more than a millisecond, and I decide that’s good enough. 

There is truly nothing else that I care to mention on this subject at the moment, so until my sister regales us with a novel on her hilarious beasts (and they provide significantly greater entertainment than my solitary hound), you will be left with this awkwardly timed ending!

-R.