Cat person or dog person?

All along I have always thought I was a cat person. I felt more pulled to them and I was sure that my destiny was to be a crazy cat lady someday.  But then, my kid begged for a dog.

When Eli was in third grade, his teacher had a "kid of the Week"  This was really just a couple of minutes in the morning to talk about your favorite things and share you favorite snack.  One of the thing that other kids had done, was have their parents bring in his or her pet for the class to meet.  Eli really wanted to be "Kid of the Week" and have a pet to show off.  I suggested that he could put the spider that hung out in the bathtub in a box and take that, but that was a no go, so we started to look for dogs.

There were some specifiers.  No puppies.  Cute as they are, no way was anyone in my household was  housebreaking a dog.  Secondly, it had to be fixed already.  Adopting a pre-housebroken pre-neutered dog was cheaper and easier than a do-it-yourself variety.  I really wanted a pug dog or other dog that looked as if they were running too fast too keep from smashing into into a wall face first.  Eli, however wanted a dog with an actual nose.  Also, no long hairs, no yippee barks and nothing big enough to ride on.  I highly recommend Petfinders.com.  We were able to find a dog that seemed ideal. I contacted the shelter and they invited a to a "meet and greet" event

 I honestly thought we were just going to check out some dogs and come back later to decide.  Instead, we left with Sarge.  He met the criteria.  Real nose (check), not a puppy (check), not too big (check), not too much hair (check), housebroken and neutered (check).  The only thing we didn't get,was a chance to check the sound of his bark.  Eli met Sarge and  was not going to part with this dog, whether or not he had a yippee bark. I just figured we'd have to get a dog voice box replacement or something if his bark  was too high.  Lucky for us, on the drive home, he saw another dog out of the window and we were delighted to hear him explode into a low, boofy sounding bark.  After we recovered from the ringing in our ears, we slapped a high five and finished the trip.  We were now official dog-people.

There are two things you can do to a dog to see how calm and docile it is.  You can poke your finger between the pads on it's feet, and you can grab it's lips and move it around.  Not only will Sarge (who came with that name) let you do those things, he will look bored about it, wag his tail, and roll over so you can scratch his tummy while you do them. He barks ferociously at dogs, squirrels, birds and people who walk within a foot of the house, but if an actually close encounter occurs, Sarge will wag his tail and beg for food.  He is not a good watchdog.

The doggie adoption agency told us that Sarge was crate trained and would prefer to stay locked in while we were gone for the day.  But as I was leaving him alone for the first time, I felt guilty and worried.  What if he got hungry or thirsty?  What if the crate was uncomfortable or he just wanted to stretch his short little legs? So I left him sleeping on the couch and closed the door and went to work.

I was the last out and the first home, so I was able to look around to see how he had fared out of the crate all day.  Sarge greeted me at the door ran to the master bedroom, where he sat and wagged his tail  Was he showing me something?  Was that (hideous, blue shag) carpet more comfortable for him?  Was he confused about how to get to the yard to do his business?  I looked around, but things seemed to be in order, so I breathed a sigh and waited for my husband to get home.

When he got there, I excitedly told him how well the dog did. We were happy that things were going so well. Dana went into the bedroom to change and several minutes later, he yelled out, "Hey!  If the dog did so well out of his crate, how come there's dog poop in my shoes?!!"  So that's what Sarge wanted to show me!   Later we would also discover a chewed up pencil and some other randomly shredded papers and unidentifiable destroyed piles of dog fodder.  It does not need to be said that Sarge spent his days locked i his crate after that.


This incident inspired me to compose a short verse:

Sarge the dog.  He eats and chews
and then he poos on Daddy's shoes.
If Sarge the dog would choose your shoes,
which would you choose?
Chews or poos?

Unfortunately for you, dear blog, I not only composed that silly couplet, I continued to find short rhyming verses about Sarge.  I think he may have channeled them to me somehow.  This led to something I'll tell you about in the next post.