Excuses, Excuses, and The Memoirs of a Canine Pain in My Ass

Well, spray me with birdshot and call me Harry Whittington. Darned if it didn't snow two days in a row last week here in the valley. That meant that TK was home, as everyone here freaks out when it snows, because a) it hardly ever does and b) there are lots of hills on which to slide and crash into things, unlike Indy where everything is mostly level. So his Montessori preschool was closed. This is one of the reasons blogging around here has been so light. That, and the aforementioned speechlessness that was briefly interrupted by my fit of pique over the Oscars.

I went around our yard and plugged every potential dog-squeeze-through spot with some big clay flowerpots. (TS repaired them permanently this weekend.) Diva Dog (not her real name, but better than the generic Trailhead Dog) watched me do this with a contemptuous expression that said, "you silly woman. Do you really think you can foil my escape? I stay here because I want to," she seemed to scoff before sniffing the air primly and flouncing off to stuff herself under the bed again.

Really, there is no way to overstate just what a prima donna this dog is. She's been this way since the beginning. Ten years ago, TS and I moved to North Carolina from a college town in Florida. Our first weekend there, we decided to take in a little local color, and visited the local flea market. We wandered the aisles of crap until we stumbled on a box alive with a squirming black mass of fur. We stopped to take a look, and there was Diva, stomping all over her brothers and sisters, pausing occasionally to chew on one of their ears or tails.

At the time I thought this sort of thing was endearing.

The woman in possession of the box advised me that her champion cocker spaniel had escaped one day from the yard (sounds familiar), and had embarked on a multi-hour spree that involved at least one tryst with a neighboring dog, whose pedigree was (approximately) half chow and half German Shepard. Diva and her siblings were the result of that unholy union. "I'm takin' 'em all to the pound if I can't find 'em homes," she said in an ominous tone.

TS and I looked at one another knowingly. Heck, we were a couple of poverty-stricken twenty-five year olds with two dogs. Clearly we needed another animal. I stuck my hand into the box and Diva commenced to gnawing on my index finger.

"Aww, this one's chewing on my hand," I said, charmed.

How those words have haunted me. Of course, the principal reason they do is because TS repeats them to me every time Diva does something obnoxious, which is usually about two times per day. This, despite the fact that Diva early on abandoned me in favor of my mate, and resolutely remains His Dog.

The other dogs observed and noted Diva's attitude almost immediately upon her arrival. But then again, she did make her intentions clear from the start:


(Isn't that carpet hideous? Oh, my salad days.) Diva's attitude did not abate as she grew out of puppyhood. Here she is, flaunting her thievery of one of the best cherry tomatoes from the garden:



Then again, she did become a passable trail dog, except for the time she ditched her pack in the Adirondack Mountains, requiring us to spend half an hour looking for it:



Interestingly, Diva has one other quality that goes a long way toward redeeming her in my eyes: she is very protective of Trailhead Kid. (Of course, that's probably of a piece with her thinking that she is the rightful Alpha Female in the house, but I'll let it slide.)

When we brought TK home from the hospital, I remember walking into my bedroom and placing him in the bassinet next to my bed. Diva Dog trotted into the room in an unusually business-like manner, plopped herself down on the floor next to the bassinet, and commenced to viciously growling whenever our two other dogs darkened the bedroom door. To this day, she will not countenance what she feels is overly rough play between TS and TK. And she is clearly TK's favorite pet. He has no use for our other dog, a much less offensive mutt of a gentle, forbearing nature. She sniffs him too much.

There's no accounting for taste, I guess.