Springtime and Dog Abuse

It's a shame dogs don't do things like carry in groceries, read to the kids, go over homework or fix supper.
Dogs eat, sleep, and bark occasionally to tell you that the meter reader is outside (gee, thanks).
So why is it that we keep them around?
I just recently paid someone else $60 to bathe and shave (remember I said she was bald?) my dog. Add to that the cost of food, tick treatment, heartworm pills, the yearly vaccinations, the $2/year county tax (!?) and it adds up fast. So, I've been analyzing Maisie's place in our household in an attempt to justify her continued residence and expense.
At first glance, the dog appears to be only a leech consumer and we should take her to the humane society immediately in order to save money and cleaning time and energy.
But I like her, so to put it into perspective, I created a list of ten good reasons to keep her around:

1. Maisie is cheaper than any one of the kids and I don't hear the constant refrain 'I need a new pair of shoes' coming from the dog.
2. She's great at fetch. (Try to get one of the kids to fetch something for you. Yeah, right.)
3. She makes a great walking companion.
4. She doesn't interrupt me when I talk. (For that alone she is safe from a massive inflation of the county dog tax.)
5. She listens. Not only listens, but OBEYS! Imagine! (Most of the time. Definitely more often than the children. This could be due to her lack of brains.)
6. She cleans spilled food off the floor.
7. Grunt, the teenager, yells at the dog as stress relief. Yeah, I know, poor dog, but think about what would happen if the dog wasn't there: poor me.
8. She's always happy to see me (sometimes too happy, but dog slobber is part of the package, I suppose).
9. She does not complain.
10. She doesn't question everything I do; she accepts me and all my idiosyncrasies without comments such as, "Mom, you're weird." (Note to kids: I'm alright with being weird; please leave me alone.)

My children have nicknames for the dog. I banned name calling amongst the children (like that worked), so they take it out on the dog. The dog doesn't seem to notice being called something that would send one of the children into a screaming hysterical fit and she loves the attention. Here are a few examples:

• Fattie
• The Fat
• Fat-iator (think Gladiator -thanks to the odd humor of S & T for that one)
• Maggot (this one gets a rise out of me; the dog is impervious)
• Slimeball
• Hairball
• Lard
• Lardy-cakes (ha!)
• Fattie-pants
• Fat Lard
• Stupid
• Idiot

Are you beginning to see the general theme here? Lack of intelligence, icky-ness, and obesity. What a great way to boost the dog's self-esteem, huh?

The name-calling has a definite lean toward the fatness theme, though Maisie is not fat (and I'm not just saying that to be nice because she really doesn't care), but she is big. Big is not big enough. Huge. Giant. Yes, really, she is. I'm used to her, so I don't really notice, but when my children bring friends over I always hear, "Holy cow! That's the biggest dog I've ever seen!" Once that's out of the way and they realize that Maisie just wants to kiss them and not eat them, things are usually okay. Most of the time. Some of the kids remain terrified.

The day I was to take her to get shaved, I warned everyone before they left for school so there would be no surprises or shocks. Well, that didn't work out so well because everyone was shocked. Of course there was the initial 'Wow, she looks weird' surprise, but the lasting shock was 'She's not fat!' With all that hair she was fluffier, but not fat. I knew she wasn't fat. I told the kids she wasn't fat. Still, it was shocking for them to realize that she wasn't fat. Probably because they had convinced themselves just by regularly calling her fat.

There's an obvious moral lesson here, but I'm running out of time, so I'll let you work that out for yourselves (are you reading this, kids?).

Anyway, the fat names haven't stopped and aren't likely to stop anytime soon. Old habits are hard to break (there's another one for ya, kids). However, 'Bald-y' and all variations have been added to the usual line-up. I'm just happy I don't have to clean up the spring shedding.

And the dog? Well, she seems perfectly happy, as usual. She hasn't noticed the new 'Bald' comments and she doen't seem to mind that she looks like one of those rubbery, stretchy, twisty toys with the big head and skinny little body and limbs. And as usual, she takes the fat comments as compliments of attention. What a lovely, oblivious, happy way to exist.

Did I mention that her tail looks like a dust mop?

And her ears look like radar dishes?

She had so much hair, I had to shorten her collar. Really.

I couldn't resist adding another view picture. If you want more, I posted a bunch of them over on the Taylor County Blog site.