Peekaboo with 'Princess Paws' [Where the Hell Was I?]

September 27, 2005

Peekaboo with 'Princess Paws'

Our dog is a douchebag.

Now, I could back that up in many ways, citing examples and video evidence, where necessary. I could cross-reference multiple posts on this site, and all sorts of incriminating pictures that have never seen the light of day. But for now, I'm simply going to describe her nightly routine. That alone should be convincing enough.

We've provided the dog her own blanket, which we keep on the living room carpet. And when I say 'provided', I actually mean 'caught her sleeping on enough times to never want to touch it again, so we chucked it into the floor for good'. And when I say 'her own blanket', I mean 'four of the damned things that she's sullied with her nasty horsemeat drool'. She doesn't quite have a blanket in every room -- yet -- but the bitch is close. A princess, she is. A smelly, slobbery, furry, loopy little princess. Think Paris Hilton with more back hair.

Anyway, she's got a special little game she plays with the living room blanket. Most evenings, the blanket is stretched out over the rug -- because the wife and I run a tight ship, and we're not going to stand for a crumpled bunch of linen on the living room floor, dammit. In other words -- if my wife hasn't fluffed the blanket, it's in a pile in the middle of the floor. You guys know how that works around the ol' house.

Now, around eight o'clock, and usually when only one of us is home, the dog will decide she needs to be under said blanket. So she'll paw at the edges, apparently believing in her tiny little brain that pulling the blanket towards her will magically lift a corner into the air. I don't know what kind of Houdini shit she's been watching on TV, but it doesn't work that way in my world, what with the laws of physics and all.

So, at best, the dog manages to scrunch the blanket back into a messy little ball. Which I get blamed for. Fuzzy little bitch.

The only way to stop the scratching and pawing, of course, is to walk over, lift the blanket, and tuck the dog underneath it. That's what she wants. Wintertime, summer, it doesn't matter. It could be one hundred and nineteen degrees, with the blanket actually melting into her fur, but that's what she wants. It's her little doggie schtick, apparently.

So, is that the end of the game? No. That's way too easy, and eight in the evening is far too early for the dog to sleep peacefully and faithfully at our feetses. No, the first round of the game usually lasts about three minutes. At that point, something will trigger the pooch -- one of us humans coming home, or getting off the couch, or the phone ringing, or a butterfly flapping its stupid goddamned wings in Bangladesh, for all I know -- and the dog will stand up and investigate the disturbance. As best as a dog can, at least, with a brain the size of a raisin and a blanket over her head.

Eventually, after much tripping and shaking, she'll free herself from the blanket -- leaving it, naturally, in a messy pile on the floor. And once she's satisfied that the sky isn't falling and we're still here, available to feed her Snausages on demand, she'll want to be back under the blanket. And so the cycle of the doggy douchebaggery starts anew.

Most nights, it takes maybe three or four tries to get her settled in for good. I don't know whether she falls asleep in there, or just stops giving a damn about what we're up to, but by eleven o'clock, she's usually pretty immobile. And by the time I hustle her off to bed, a couple of hours later, she's damned near immovable. It takes a good ten minutes to get her out, up the stairs, and settled into her spot in the bedroom. On the extra pillows that she slept on for three months before we 'provided' those to her, too.

You know, I take it back. Even that Hilton bitch doesn't get this kind of royal treatment. Jesus.