And maybe two-faced.
In my defense, when I was doing it myself there were no exclamation points and I was not remotely motivated by the desire for Dog #1 to have a playmate. It just sorta happened. Our last labrador (Morgan -- many of you knew her) went to the Clearing at the End of the Path in November of 2008. At the time I vowed No More Animal Life at the house, because Morgan was dog perfection and I had no desire whatsoever to bring in any new blood. My thinking was, we’ve always had Labradors and this was the last / best of them (a good one to end on, in other words), and our lives are pure chaos anyway so maybe it would be good to just take that variable out of the model.
Wellllll ... about 4-6 weeks later, Paige started talking about dogs -- Rescue Dogs, in particular. My initial thought was are you kidding me no no no no absolutely not I do NOT want another animal right now AT ALL -- particularly not some random Rescue Dog that has had who-knows-what done to it (I know, I know, it’s a good cause and all that but still ...). But after talking about it some, I figured it probably would be OK and we decided to do some investigating. Within a week or so, Paige had located what she claimed was the perfect dog, from one of the Houston area Lab Rescue organizations. At roughly the same time, our next-door neighbors had a visitor who just happened to be in possession of a 3-month old yellow Labrador puppy. I was in the backyard when the puppy was out, and our neighbor passed him through the fence to me. I took him inside (like a complete idiot) and put him down on the floor, and of course the kids went absolutely nuts. After all, there is nothing -- and I do mean NOTHING (including your first-born child) -- that is cuter than a fat, huge-pawed Labrador puppy.
You can feel the Perfect Storm brewing, right?
That very afternoon, we called the top breeder in the area and sure enough wouldn’t you know it by golly they had a fresh litter of super-high-end Field Trial pups. We drove out immediately, looked them over (thereby sealing our fate), and I intentionally chose the smallest, most docile 3-week-old of the bunch. Meanwhile back at the ranch, Paige is saying, “Ummmmmmmmm ... this isn’t going to have any impact on the Rescue Dog situation is it? Because, y’know, we’re RESCUING him and I’m sure he’s counting on us at this point. It just wouldn’t be right to NOT get him. Besides, they can keep each other company and play together while we’re at WORK/SCHOOL/BOOTCAMP!!!!!!!!”
And then I feel the Barney Fife uniform dropping down on me and the door clicking shut behind me and I know that no matter what I do, there is no way that I will be able to reach the key hanging on the wall outside of my cell.
So Bo (the two year-old Rescue Dog) came to live with us. He hung out outside. He came in when we indicated that it was OK (after politely asking if we were quite sure this was allowed and wiping his paws carefully on the mat). He gracefully hopped up on the couch and sat next to Paige when we watched movies. He went into his kennel at 10:30 p.m. and loved it there and actually had to be coaxed out in the morning. He never moved at more than a walk. Ever. He would sit there, dead still, and let you pet him for as long as you wanted and would then look up at you and say “thank you very much ... that was very kind of you ... would you like me to calmly walk over to the door and go outside or would you prefer that I calmly walk over to my kennel and retire for a while or maybe you’d rather I calmly lie here in case you decide you’d like to come back in four or five hours and pet me again?”
It was unbelievable. We actually treated him for a marginal thyroid problem because he was TOO CALM. No joke. He acted like he was part sloth.
A month or so later, Mia arrived in all her glory. We have always had well-bred Labradors because I used to do a lot of duck hunting here in Texas and a lot of desert quail hunting in Arizona. I like trainable dogs and I like really smart dogs, and Mia most definitely is both of those things. But Mia’s bloodlines are Different. Very Different. The smart money says there is an ADHD greyhound in the woodpile somewhere. Or a racehorse ... or maybe a Tasmanian Devil (the cartoon kind). When she was 4-5 months old, we called her Spawn of Satan. She’s now a little over a year old and she has not slowed down a bit. When I take her running with me, after three miles or so I look down and she hasn’t even begun to think about panting. The look I get is more like “OK, I’ve shown you that I can heel at a trot for 25 minutes ... any chance you’d be willing to unsnap that leash so I can actually get some cardio work in?” Having owned this breed exclusively for 20 years, I KNOW that high energy in young Labradors is the norm. But seriously, this is completely ridiculous.
Anyway, there could hardly be two more different dogs than Bo and Mia. Or at least that’s what I used to think. If you’d been at my house in January of 2009 and then decided to pop back in for a visit tomorrow, you’d probably come in and ask where Bo is. I’d go open the door to the backyard, let the two dogs in, and after you’d been leveled a couple of times by the black-and-yellow tornado, you’d say, “No seriously ... where is Bo?” The black dog would then (hearing his name) sprint to your side with a crazed look in his eyes (and a yellow dog nipping at his heels), you would notice that this specimen does, indeed, bear a striking physical similarity to the sloth-dog you’d seen 14 months before, and then you’d probably comment that the demon that Jesus cast out of the possessed guy and that subsequently sent an entire herd of pigs to their death seems to be pretty comfortable in its new home.
So in other words, my answer remains, rather emphatically, that getting two dogs so that they can keep each other company (or whatever other reason you decide to fabricate) is not the greatest of ideas. The activity-slash-destruction function is not remotely linear. Two dogs ruin the yard at least three times as quickly as one dog does. Two dogs tear up four or five times as much junk in the house as one dog does. Two guinea pigs? Fine. They’re in cages. We have that setup and it works. Two of those worthless little rodent dogs that you can dress up in doll clothes and carry around in a lunchbox? That might be OK too. I dunno. Double the annoying yappy barking, double the cheese bill ... it might work. But if we’re talking about animals that could survive for 24 hours on their own in the wild, I tend to think that the Magic Number probably is 1.
Editor’s Note: No, the author of this post does not regret getting two dogs. But there is absolutely no question that if Bo could push Mia in front of a bus or arrange to have her water bucket filled with Prestone, he would.
No comments:
Post a Comment