When the Fur Flies … by Peter McKay on Creators.com

Recently

All Dressed Up … Somehow over the past few years, our smelly, grumpy old West Highland Terrier of a dog has found himself a pied-a-terre. (That's French for "second home." I looked it up on the Internet.) Harry still sleeps here at night, but every morning,…Read more. Battle Grounds As my father got older, like a lot of men, he became more finicky about certain things. One of them was his morning coffee. A true caffeine fiend, every night before bed, Pop would set the coffee maker, along with two cups, a spoon and sugar bowl, …Read more. Revenge of the Baby Geniuses This past week, I read that Disney, the company that owns the "Baby Einstein" video series, was offering refunds to any parents who had purchased the products in the last five years and were dissatisfied. "Baby Einstein" videos, …Read more. Get R' Done Day Last Saturday, I was out running errands while my wife stayed at home to catch up on some long-delayed house cleaning. I called her between stops to see how it was going. "Not good," she said into the phone. "One, the washing machine …Read more.

When the Fur Flies …

The other week, our neighbors went away for a week and needed someone to watch Milo.

Milo is one of those small, longhaired dogs that you usually see sticking out of heiress' purses. They're tiny, yippy and frenetic. Real dogs actually wince when they see these little fur balls; they're embarrassed to be associated with them. Technically, they might not even really be dogs, as they seem to be composed of least 50 percent dryer lint.

When our neighbors left, however, they offered to pay our 13-year-old twin daughters to watch Milo. That meant going over to the neighbor's house four times a day, letting Milo out to go to the bathroom and feeding him. They'd have to stop by at 7 a.m., noon, 6 p.m. and then again at 11 p.m.

At first, I was a little skeptical, given that we have a dog of our own, a scruffy, old, smelly and stone-deaf West Highland Terrier named Harry. In the past five years, I have never seen the girls let Harry out, let him in or even feed him. Every once in a while, they squeal and ask why Harry has to chew himself like that in front of the family, but for all intents and purposes, he is invisible to them.

To be fair, Harry isn't much fun. He's doesn't play games, fetch or even move if it isn't absolutely necessary. He's now so old that every morning when I come down to the kitchen, I stand over his body — all splayed out in his dog bed — to see whether his chest is actually moving before I go get the paper. When he walks, he shuffles like a tiny, tired canine zombie. The children often complain that a live dog would be much more fun than a dead one.

With this job, though, our girls had their work cut out for them. Like so many purse dogs, Milo has an annoying tendency to pee all over the floor whenever he gets excited, which is just about every time someone comes in the door. So, our neighbors put up baby gates before they left, believing they could confine Milo to the kitchen where he could do less damage.

Milo may not be a guard dog, or even a real dog, but he turned out to be a genius at jumping over gates.

Hours after the neighbors left, the girls found Milo standing in the front hall, out of the gate. Peeing.

They fed him, walked him and then put him back inside the kitchen. Then they stepped outside, ran to the windows and watched as this tiny hairball vaulted over the gate, landed in the living room and, just to add a little variety to his act, pooped. At this rate, the neighbors would come back from vacation and have to recarpet the entire house.

In a panic, one girl stayed in the house to guard Milo, while the other ran home to drag my wife and I over to solve the problem. After shutting Milo in the kitchen and watching him jump over twice, I went home and grabbed some lumber and tools. I cut some boards to wedge at the bottom of the kitchen doors, so the gates could be higher. We reset the gates, I glared threateningly and pointed at Milo, and we shut the door.

We didn't even get to the window before he was over the new, higher gate. I caught a glimpse of him flying through the air like a furry missile.

Next we tried placing chairs in front of the gate. They only served as steppingstones for the airborne pooch. I suggested spreading olive oil all over the floor so Milo couldn't get traction, but nobody supported the idea. We even tried higher chairs. Milo just laughed derisively, as if to say, "Come on! At least make it a challenge!"

Finally, an hour later, we'd piled enough furniture, including a dining room table, in front of the doors so that even a Great Dane might have some difficulty getting out. The girls looked exhausted. It was going to be a long week.

As we trudged into our own house, we found Harry in the front hall on his side, looking like he was just waiting for the crime scene investigator to come draw a chalk line around his corpse. I stood looking for a moment and then leaned down.

Harry didn't move a muscle, but his chest moved. A little.

"What a good, good dog!" I said.

To find out more about Peter McKay and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Comments

Email updates

RSS Feed