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LOOKING FOR LOVE
IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES |
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Christmas is coming, and the holiday season is
the time for my wife and I to spend time with our granddogs.
Bandit and Obie will be home soon, and we couldn’t
be more excited. They’ll come running through the front door and bound
into our arms, thrilled to see us, licking and slobbering all the way.
It’s quite a change from our resident dog,
Lucy, a 13 year old pug. Even in her prime, Lucy was never much for
bounding into arms, or licking, or slobbering, or fetching or doing much
of anything except eating and sleeping. Now that she’s 13, she’s
perfected her talents.
She’s totally deaf, she can’t see too well, and
watching her get out of her doggie bed in the morning, thanks to her
arthritis, reminds me of me. But the old girl is as sweet as they come,
and she can eat and sleep with the best of them.
This is not to say that Bandit and Obie are
perfect. Like most offspring, they have their issues. For instance, Bandit
doesn’t respect me in the morning after a blissful night of sleeping
together.
I’ve slept with Bandit, a 3 year old Corgi/Dachsund
mix, many times when my daughter has left him with us while out of town.
He snuggles up to me all night long, and I rub his tummy and scratch
behind his ears until I fall asleep.
In the morning I do more rubbing and scratching,
but I can feel him drifting away. When we finally climb out of bed, it’s
as though I no longer exist. He follows my wife around the house, totally
ignoring me. I sit down and try to get him to climb on my lap, and he
turns away.
"I feel like a prostitute," I tell my
wife. "He just used me. He might as well have left some money on the
table beside the bed."
"He prefers women," replied my wife.
"Get over it. Why don’t you take Lucy for a walk."
It’s more like taking Lucy for a drag. Getting
her down the stairs and out the door is no easy task. But when Bandit
hears "walk," he acknowledges me again. With gusto. All is
forgiven.
Obie, my son’s 3-year old German Shepherd, also has
his issues. Basically, he loves everybody, which of course makes me
insanely jealous.
In the beginning, I thought the show was only for me.
He’d go nuts when I saw him for the first time in weeks or months, and
he made me feel as though I was his best friend. But after seeing him
react the same way when the UPS guy came to the door, I realized I was
nothing more than a warm body.
Some might suggest I’m the one with the issues, not
the granddogs. That’s a possibility. Perhaps I’m desperate for canine
affection, thanks to Lucy’s preoccupation with eating and sleeping. It
has been 13 years of indifference. I know she loves me, but a lick every
once in awhile would go a long way.
Pugs don’t lick, I guess. Nor do they come when
they’re called. Nor do they fetch. In fact, they’re a lot like cats. I
hate cats.
But I love Lucy. She’s a part of the family,
and I wouldn’t trade her for any other dog. I can live without the
affection, because I now have granddogs who fake their love for me.
So they’ll be home soon, along with their
masters. They’ll be genuinely happy to see me, and exaggerate it a bit
in the hopes I’ll give them a treat, which I will immediately do. And
then I’ll give them another and another, until they think I’m the most
wonderful human in the world.
I’ll feed them under the table, I’ll feed
them inside, I’ll feed them outside, I’ll feed them in the car. By the
time they leave, they’ll be a little fatter and they’ll love me like
no other.
It hasn’t worked yet, but it will. Obie will
save his best greeting for me, and Bandit will respect me in the morning.
It might be too late for Lucy, but that’s why
they made granddogs.
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