At Least My Dog Likes Me (Cigar Smoke 6-5-08)

I’m looked down on for a lot of things. Oh, sure, you’re going to say it’s because I am short. Real funny. And I’m not that damned short, dammit. I’m taller than Napoleon. I’m taller than that woman race driver. I’m taller than them short people who Randy Newman sings about.

But, I have to admit there are numerous traits I have that are looked down on by people such as yourselves and your critical friends. To which I say, “Pshaw.” I am going to keep those irritating traits and I will enjoy exercising them until I either buy the farm or one of you sells me the farm.

I cannot go into all of those traits right now because this is a limited space, so I will just highlight one of the things I do which seems to irritate people who observe me doing it. I like to feed my dog weird shit, OK. Is that so bad?

Here’s how I see it. A dog is on the planet for, say, 13 years. And I think he should be happy for those years. And most people I know just feed their dogs dog food. They think it’s healthy and their vet tells them it is and maybe it is. I don’t know.

What I do know is that it is damn boring. And if I were their dog I would bite them as hard as I could or at least pee on their leg.

One friend of mine, who I consider a great friend, just dumps a 50- pound bag of kibble crap on the garage floor and if his dogs eat it, fine. If not, they die. I took Hadley the Airedale to his house one day, and he looked at that pile of supposed dog food and he got back in the car. I couldn’t blame him. We left and went to In-N-Out and shared a couple of double-doubles.

I spend time fixing Hadley his meal every night. He never knows what the hell he’s going to get. But he usually eats it all. Yes, I am that great of a cook. I’ll usually give him two packets of Caesar dog food just to give a nod to vitamins and minerals and such. But then I’ll add some hot dog chunks. And some strands of string cheese. And some pieces of liverwurst. That kind of thing.

Each night I try to do something different. Like I’ll buy sliced ham and cheap baloney and cut off hunks of salami. And I’ll just add those to his dish. And, of course, if we have any leftovers, I’ll put meat loaf or chicken or two-week-old, fat-covered stroganoff lumps in with his packets of health. I’m telling you, he smiles. Really. He looks at me, and I smile back at him and he tells me in dog language (which, by the way, is very similar to stuttering) that he is so glad he doesn’t live with my garage-floor-dog-food-spilling, animal-mistreating friend.

Every once in a while I will buy him some ground round. And I’ll just give it to him raw (although at times in the past I admit I have lightly browned it in the skillet) and he goes over to his dish and his nostrils flare and he sticks his long-headed dog nose in that raw meat and he wolfs that ground round down, and then he comes out into the living room walking on his hind legs and he high-fives me. Oh God, that’s a great feeling.

Hey, the point is, I try to think of him. That’s all. Hell, he’s made it to 11 years old. That’s 77 in our years. Heck, he’s older than I am. And he seems happy. And all his dog friends want to come over to our house to eat. I don’t know, I think dog health is overrated.

The other night I went to Panda Express and got some Orange Chicken and some chop suey and sweet and sour something and cashew nut chicken and beef broccoli stuff. And I brought it home and sat on the end of the couch and was eating it, and then Mr. Fur Face comes over like he always does and sits right in front of me and looks sadder than a monk seeing Madonna naked. And he just looks up at me with his big eyes and dripping tongue. Kind of reminds me of someone I dated in high school. Oh, no — that was me.

I couldn’t stand the sound of a dog crying, so now and then I would give him a piece of cashew chicken to shut him up. He liked it. And then I gave him a few tidbits of the bad fatty pieces of beef I didn’t want, and he liked them, too. Then I gave him a big glob of Orange Chicken and you know what he did? If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’. He spit it out! On my pants!

That ungrateful little weasel. Anyway, I finished eating and had some leftovers, so I thought I would piss him off and teach him a lesson. I got a plate and put out the sweet and sour pork stuff that even I couldn’t stomach and threw in a little chop suey and the Orange Chicken gooey-ass sauce. And I put the broccoli right on top. I put the plate down in front of him. I think it was moving by itself. And you know what?

He ate the whole thing! Just slopped it up like a four-legged vacuum. Man, it was gone. Fast. And then he is going around the living room wiping his snout-face on the chairs and all over the rug and smiling his dog smile. So what did I do? The only thing I could do. I gave him a fortune cookie. He ate the whole thing. Even the little paper fortune.

Which I carefully picked out of a moist pile with my chopsticks, and was able to decipher that it read, “Canine who eats General Mao Chinese shredded chicken will do a dog barf on your carpet.”

Those commies are very wise.