Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

My dog is convinced I'm crazy. First of all, I sit around looking at a blinky screen for many hours every day, which everyone in the world can tell you is extremely boring. Then sometimes I look at a different blinky screen and do strange repetitive movements while someone on the screen shouts out things like, "Fight fat and win!"

She finds my insanity amusing and gets a big doggie grin on her face.

Then yesterday, I did something really strange: I kept some of her poop. Now she's used to the fact that I have a strange obsession with her poop. After all, whenever she leaves some somewhere when we're on a walk, I am compelled to collect it in a little bag and take it home for disposal.

She has grown to accept this as a measure of my obsessive love.

But this time, I did something even stranger. I put it in a container and labeled it. She kept trying to sniff the container, in an effort to figure out what I was doing. Then, even stranger, I took the container of poop, and we got in the truck and drove to her least favorite place in the world, the vet.

She used to be fine with going to the vet until I started boarding her there because I couldn't take her on certain trips. Now she has a strange and disturbing reaction. When we pull up, she starts shrieking and objecting. While she doesn't speak English, it's clear she's saying, "How could you betray me! I thought we were going for a nice car ride, and you brought me here! To the Place of Bad Smells!!"

But then for some reason, she jumps out of the car excitedly. Her hair rises on the back of her neck, and yet she smiles and looks happy. I can only conclude that she's under so much stress she goes temporarily insane.

This time, instead of registering her and then handing her off to one of the assistants, I waited with her in the waiting room, where she barked incessantly and tried to back into a corner. Somebody asked to use the phone and then complained she couldn't hear anything. They put us in a private room to wait.

The vet wasn't too bad. He did put a stick up her butt, jab her with something sharp and probe her in areas she'd rather keep private, but at least he gave her treats. She knew he was another crazy human, because he was glad to receive the poop I'd collected.

She was so grateful when she realized we were only there for a brief humiliating experience -- and not for a weekend in a pen, tended by strangers -- that while I was trying to write the check, she kept jumping up on her hind legs, resting her paws on the counter and barking joyfully. The staff smiled broadly as we finally left.

Una does sometimes wonder about my sanity, but she puts up with me because she loves me. After all, she knows humans are not a very stable species. Otherwise, why would they eat the things they eat: carrots, JELL-O, bananas? And why should anyone want to sleep past 8 a.m.? Or stay awake past 7 p.m.?

That's okay, because I don't understand why she likes to smell other dogs' butts.

But we look past each other's quirks and foibles and concentrate on what we have in common. For example, I enjoy scratching her behind the ears, and she enjoys being scratched.

So we're cool like that.

Moral:
Learn from your friends.

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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