FETCH, SIT, STAY

While I was raising my family, we also raised an adorable, white Cockapoo dog. His full name was Reginald Zebulon... a name I chose from both 1.) my then favorite baseball player and 2.) a nickname my peditrician used to call my son.

Once, after having this family pet for many, many years, Claudia and her family housed the dog when I was out of town for a short time. Kinda a mistake, I think, given I came back, and within days I had to take our pet to the vet and boom. Next thing I knew, we had to put him to sleep. It was sad, and actually, a big shock. I could never really BLAME Claudia since a: I doubt she would deliberately do in my dog and b: the dog can't talk thus we'll never know exactly what went down.

On the other hand, I was thrilled to no longer have the responsibility of mothering an aging dog who's bladder became so old, that I was unarming the burglar alarm at 2:00 a.m, again at 4:00 a.m. and yet again at 6:00 a.m. so the dog could go out his doggie door. It was a major pain in the neck. So, maybe in the end, Claudia did me a major favor. Talk about putting a postitive spin on things, huh?

In the meantime, I haven't had a pet since. Which is good news, since I am SO not an animal lover. Not after the first two days, anyway. Which was always a mystery to me as to why our dog ever fell absolutely, madly in love with me. It was the REST of the family that petted, played and spent time with the dog, yet it was ME he followed everywhere I went. He adored me... while I merely placated him.

Anyway... NOW, once again, I am sharing my house with a dog. My Dad's dog, actually. I'm housing it only while my sister is out of town. Which is for about 5 days. I'm not jumping for joy, trust me, but I'm happy to help out, regardless. She brought the dog over to me yesterday. Wanna guess how long it took before the dog decided to go to the bathroom on my carpeted, back patio?? I mean REALLY go to the bathroom? Geez. About two minutes, maybe? Nice way to endear me to this newly assigned task, don't you think?

I must say, however, that since that initial back porch intro, the dog has been a perfect house guest. Any animal that lets me sleep until 9:30 is definitely my kind of pet. Of course, he never ate even a tidbit of his food YESterday, so today I had to naturally serve him MY food. Dog food, he has no need for. MY food, he laps up with fervor. If I wind up having to actually COOK for this dog, I'll freak.

Just my luck, Lobster Thermidor is amongst his favorites, for all I know. Which, now that I think about it, is not so bad... turns out, it's MY favorite, too. Already we could be a team in the eating department!