This entry was posted on 12/7/2005 2:34 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
My stepson, whom we shall call Pookie Jr., sent his Dad this story a few days ago. After I read it, I asked him if I could post it here. He graciously said yes. He's a good boy like that.
Pookie Jr. will be 15 on Friday (Yo, Homes, happy birthday! The card (and the cash) are in the mail!).
He's a very smart kid and he has the most beautiful long lashed eyes you've ever seen. He is a regular reader and commenter here, which is why my language isn't worse. He's one of those cool kids that you can't wait for them to grow up so you can see what a cool adult they're going to be.
Here's the story.
We were up in Little Rock at PetsMart shopping for cat stuff (yawn).
I wanted to get Gracie a sweater. (Ed. note: Gracie is his pug) Not because I wanted a cute picture, because that's impossible with my butt ugly dog, but to keep her warm. She refuses to sleep in the Igloo (dog house) we bought her.
My plan was just to slip it on her and she'd go on with her doggie life until I had to pry it off of her when it became too drool encrusted or grass stained to look at anymore. How naive.
It wasn't anything fancy, just a knit cloth tube with two holes for her front legs. It was the plainest one I could find, blue with a white geometric snowflake pattern. Note that I did not get her the kind that could be wrapped around her and snapped shut, but the kind that has to go over and have her legs pulled through. Mistake # 1.
We get home around 8 o'clock at night and I decide to put it on her for the night, armed with several treats for appeasement (her IQ doubles in the presence of anything edible). I go outside and the drooling beast is there to meet me.
Amazingly getting the sweater over her head and around her neck was easy and I promptly rewarded her with a MilkBone.
She then goes through the process of trying to swallow the treat whole, choking on it, coughing it up, chewing it up and finally successfully eating it, all with this blue sweater bunched around her semi-neck.
Next I try to finish the job of winterizing my pug. I order her to sit and stay (using half of her vocabulary in the process), then attempt to put one leg through the leg hole. Apparently Gracie is very touchy about her legs, hollering and barking very loudly let me know she didn't approve.
She spends the next few minutes running around in circles and barking at nothing in particular. After giving her time to forget what she was upset about, we repeated the process for about thirty minutes, trying various positions to wrestle her middle aged furry behind into the sweater, with no luck.
I finally give up, take the sweater off her head and vow to come back with reinforcements.
The next day,with the help of some friends, we finally manage to manhandle my pug into the sweater, which actually doesn't look half bad. Think furry pig in a blanket and you'll get the picture.
After convincing herself that the sweater didn't impede her ability to run full speed around the pool(her favorite activity to burn off all those calories she consumes), she goes about her pug business, seemingly none the worse for wear, or so I think.
A few hours later I decided to check on my newly sweatered canine and somehow the mutt had managed to slip her front legs through the neck and the sweater was wrapped around her mid-section like a tube sock. It's hard to describe, but with my limited knowledge of dog leg motion and the laws of physics, it appeared impossible for her to have done what she had without ripping the sweater. Yet she had. One day I'm gonna leave my algebra homework out there and see what she does with it. Weird dog.
So what have I learned from this? Not only do I have a fat, near-sighted, epileptic 5 year old pug, I have a fat, near-sighted, epileptic 5 year old NUDIST pug.
Add that to the list of reasons we'd never be able to give her away.
And, happy birthday!