Fuckin' Dogs

Okay, I have a question: where did all these fuckin' dogs come from?? Yeah, yeah, I get it: Man's best friend, and all that jazz. Whatev. I'm just sayin'…there's a lotta damn mutts in my neighborhood, and they just seem to mill about aimlessly, with tapioca where they oughta have brains.

See, we're cat people here. Oh, I had dogs as a kid: Pepper, whom I can be seen holding in one of my favorite childhood photos, but whom I do not remember at all; and Frisky, who was sold to my grandmother as a Cockapoo (great name, that), but turned into a shaggy…something. Not D.A., but a great black smelly beast of a dog that was a lot of fun, and was a great pet, and seemed to be more Old English Sheepdog than anything remotely resembling a poodle. Since my teens, then, I've been a cat person. Neat, orderly, leave-me-the-fuck-alone pets that require next to zero maintenance and shit where they're told.

I took my cat Ramona outside recently (on a leash, as she's an indoor pet…which pretty much oughta be redundant, yes?), and this…thing from the neighbor's, like, seriously four houses down, apparently thought she was some sort of furry candy, 'cause I turned my back for a minute and this shit-colored blur came streaking across our lawn, paws in apparent defiance of gravity as I never once saw them touch the ground, and he/it tried grabbing her in his/its slobbery excuse for a food-hole. I screamed at it, I mean really screamed, the kind you can't hold in from shock, and it took off back for home. (Poor Ramona, meanwhile, spent the next several hours trying to lick her fur back into some semblance of order after she puffed up to the size of smallish yew bush.) I can't even begin to guess what kind of an animal this might be: poo brown and white, all blotchy, with short military fur, long legs, a big chest, and that thin, waspish waist of a whippet or greyhound. Ugh. Eyes all lolling every which way, like some miscolored Cookie Monster. Too dumb to even know about gravity!

Then there's another neighbor, possessor of 4 hounds of ill-repute, animals that are so barbaric in nature and of such mixed heritage, I'm pretty sure one of 'em is part Dodge Dart. These things - Bumpus Hounds, we call 'em - bark as if each other is constantly on fire, and once were witnessed milling about their returning owner's car in the driveway to the point that it took her almost 3 minutes to go from curb to garage.

Lots of people around our new neighborhood have these little dogs. Y'know, these…little dogs, the kind that if you could catch one, you could incise a nice clean hole in their stomach with a melon baller, stick in a long handle, and use 'em to mop the floor. Always fulla nervous energy, these dogs, which they expel by peeing on everything in sight and yapping until they're hoarse. Except they never fucking GET hoarse, do they? No, they just bark on & on & on, until pretty soon the Bumpus Hounds are braying away like the misbehaving donkey-boys on Pleasure Island.

There are a few dogs that I like. Our friends K. and S. have a big ol' black labradoodle thing who, despite hogging drool from at least three other perfectly usable dogs, is a pretty good egg. Likewise E. and S., whose now-deceased lab was a good cuddler and absolutely a saint with kids. Mostly, though, I'm deluged by canines of a more annoying nature, which prompted this exchange with our local hardware store cashier:

R.: "Need anything else today, Scott?"

Me: "Yeah…where do you keep your dog poison?"

R.: "…"

Me: "Or traps. How about a nice medium-sized dog trap?"

R.: holds head in hands

Turns out you can't buy dog poison. I Googled "dog poison" and only came up with pages that help you try to get poison out of dogs. Hmph. Seems backward, y'ask me.