Listen to thisIf you ever want a reminder of why you don’t want to get a puppy, I suggest you get a puppy.
Just before Christmas, my daughter got one. She’s a Golden Retriever (the puppy, not my daughter), and they named her Lola.
Now, if there’s one thing you can say about Lola, it’s that she’s cute. Devastatingly, off-the-charts cute, both in looks and actions. She’s five months old, essentially a toddler, and she’s adorable and goofy and clumsy and insatiably curious and hilarious to watch.
From a distance.
But for Spring Break, my daughter and her husband went to Cuba, so they asked if we’d mind taking care of Lola for the time they were away. My wife generously agreed, because she was off work with an injury and flying out to visit her sister the next day, so what did she care?
So it came down to me and Lola. Well, and Roxy.
Roxy is our main dog, a canine of thoroughly mixed and utterly indeterminate heritage. We believe there is some Border Collie in there, possibly some Lab, perhaps a Spaniel, a dollop of German Shepherd, and for all we know some donkey or raccoon. She’s reasonably good-natured, and when we welcome a doggy guest into the house, Roxy is expected to be a gracious host.
Both Roxy and I ran out of “gracious” in the first hour.
You could almost see Roxy explaining things to Lola as she came in the door and they were having their mandatory sniff: “Okay, there are some rules. This is my house, this is my space, you are welcome to come in and share it, but just so we’re clear: touch my food and you will get 75 pounds of snarling, snapping ME in your snout. Am I understood? Sniff if you understand me.”
It’s possible Lola understood. But puppies have the retentive abilities of goldfish. And, like sharks, they are born to search relentlessly for food.
Puppies are always on the prowl for something to eat. They sniff everything, and because they are young and inexperienced, often the smell isn’t enough to tell them whether a glove or a pillow or, say, a book is edible. So they’ll snap it up, chew it, and sometimes swallow it to see. For puppies, the world breaks down into “edible”, “possibly edible, we’ll give it a shot”, “not edible at this moment, but we’ll try it again later”, and “not necessarily edible, but certainly chewable and will do till something edible comes along”.
Roxy’s food: definitely “edible”. And although Lola vaguely remembered something about some rule, it wasn’t about to stop her from diving at that dish. And getting a faceful of Roxy about one heartbeat later.
Well, Lola retreated, yelping and whining, and we thought it was sorted. But minutes later, the scene was repeated. And again. And again. Finally, Roxy had had enough. Rather than have to stand guard over her dish, she just wolfed the food down in a few gulps. Problem solved.
New problem created.
A few minutes later, Roxy wandered out into the middle of the room and began gulping and gagging. It’s her way of saying, “I’m about to hurl, so this would be a good time for you to leap up, fly into a panic, and try frantically to get me to go outside. It won’t work, I’m going to throw up on your floor, but it always seems to make you feel better that you tried.”
And up came all that food. At which point, you could almost hear Lola say, “Really? Well, if you don’t want it, do you mind ...?”
So now I was torn between trying to get Roxy outside “in case she wasn’t finished “and stopping Lola from ... well, I don’t think I have to carry this series of images much further. Let’s just say I can clean up after a dog without getting sick myself. But what Lola was about to do? No way. I mean: NO. WAY.
The next day I was able to come up with a way to protect Roxy’s food from Lola and Lola’s food from Roxy. I won’t go into details, but if you remember the old riddle about the farmer going to market with the goose, the fox, and the bag of grain you have an idea of how it got solved.
I was so proud of myself for outsmarting this puppy. I felt a warm glow as I walked back into the living room ... to find Lola surrounded by a million pieces of fluttering white tissue.
She looked at me, and I could read her thoughts. –You left the bathroom door open. I got out some toilet paper. This is going to be such a fun week!”
This feature: From Nils Ling’s book Truths and Half Truths. A collection of some of his most memorable and hilarious columns.
