From the Dog's Mouth. Wavecrest Imprint
When I come to the Dog Park it is open season for all bitches and me. Daddy asked Alan if Grace could come over to our yard for a play date. I’ll show her a play date. She’ll soon know that I may be neutered but I am still all man and then some.
I don’t know a Rhodesian Ridgeback from a Heinz 57 variety slum dog. But I do know that whatever Grace’s tendencies, I’ll lick ‘em and like ‘em as long as they are hers. When we came home, Daddy looked up Rhodesian Ridgeback on the internet and here is what it said: “Red wheaten in color, ferocious in the hunt but at home she is calm, gentle, obedient and a good dog. They grow to be 60 to 80 pounds.” Holy Toledo, Nellie. She is going to be a big one. Daddy always liked bigger women just like Tom Cruise. What I loved about the description is “ferocious in the hunt,” especially if she is hunting for me. I think I dig ferocious. Fur will fly!
Speaking of bitches, I have been putting the thought in Daddy’s head to get another Wire Fox Terrier, but a girly girl. He and his friends go to dinner and to movies. Ever so often they fly off to New York and hunt old digs in Egypt and go to the French Open in Paris. He’s been bitching a lot lately about his Southern-based airline. Although he’s a million-miler on this bucket of bolts, he is thinking of switching to another airline. I can tell him, but he won’t listen: they are all crummy. They have too many hidden fees. Always late. All these hot air balloons will soon stuff so many people in smaller spaces that the obesity rate in the world had better fall or it will not be a pretty picture in the boxcars in the back. Anyway, his travel schedule may not allow for a sister act for me. Pity, I say.
TV, Joy and Stupid People
For as long as I could remember, mon père ate his dinner on a TV-tray watching one show at 6:00 o’clock in the evening: Joy Behar. She is a big-mouthed redhead with more opinions than a den of Beverly Hills ex- housewives trying to tell the Tri-Deltas how to catch a husband and take him for everything she can run away with.
Joy Behar is quick to curse and throw barbs at people she doesn’t like, most of all Ann Coulter, a real mean-spirited potty-mouth blond. The yapper doesn’t talk. She spews. Joy also hates that Aussie actor Mel Gibson who got into hot water with his wife and the press when he got some Russian chick pregnant. His wife finally divorced him and got a zillion dollar settlement. Joy would probably tar and feather him if she could. Oh, and Joy is Italian, which of course causes il mio papà to roll his eyes in a paroxysm of, pardon the pun, joy. The television maven, one of his majesty’s favorite words, uses Italian words when she holds court.
After Joy Behar says, “Goodnight everybody,” Dada reads for an hour and then turns out the light. That’s when I hop out of the Italian finery and go to my own bed, which mon père got for me when I was done with the crate. If he gets up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, he picks me up and takes me back to his bed and holds me tight. Soon enough, he turns his back to mine and goes back to sleep. I stay in bed until he wakes me at 5:00 o’clock with, “Wake up Mr. Darby, it is time to go potty and pee.”
And that’s how a dog with peerage and an ordinary garden-variety human ends and starts his days.
Glenn Beck Needs to Be in Judge Judy’s Court
One thing I like about il mio papà and our nightly bedtime ritual is that he no longer makes me lie under the covers like he used to. He stopped scrunching me in his arms and holding me tight. We recently watched the U.S. Open and saw Venus Williams and Roger Federer win their opening matches. I was catnapping and Dada scratched my back every now and again while he was glued to every swing of the racket from these two-legged stars. And when he turned out the light and we were close for a few minutes, he told me I could go to my own bed if I wanted to. I did, and jumped off that million dollar bed and those Pratesi sheets. I was fast asleep before he was.
It’s time for me to weigh in on some of the yakety-yak-yak nonsense that is floating around terra firma. I was around during the Pony Express days when two-leggeds got their news a few weeks after the Indians lost another chunk of land and Abraham Lincoln got shot and killed by some nutcase. These days, humans get info in a nanosecond. Speed isn’t always a good thing. What’s wrong with turning things over in your mind? Why not give a thought impression time to breathe? Thank God my Dada didn’t fly off the handle and ship me back to Iowa every time he got mad at me.
Oy vey, as the Jews lament. I would like to send Glenn Beck, a real television fruitcake, to Siberia. He rips and tears at any and everything liberal and humane and he orates and bloviates — an expression I heard from Bill O’Reilly, one of those other opinionated commentators on Fox, the most right-wing TV station on the air. Daddy actually declared “enough is enough from the insane asylum” so we don’t even pause on that channel. He says it in such a sanctimonious voice that he sees devils and snakes crawling around Beck and O’Reilly and the rest of the mean-spirited commentators on Fox. Il mio papà believes that 2012 may mean the end of these irritating talking heads. What I can tell you is that I am glad that I can’t be heard by anybody but Daddy because I would be on a lot of Hit Lists, locked up or “put to sleep” by these douche bags.
And then there is this issue of terrorism, which makes everybody from the four corners loonier than Olivia de Havilland in the snake pit. Two-legged types are trying to keep Muslims from building a mosque near “Ground Zero” in New York. God, I would think that more humane conscious two-leggeds would rather find peace in their souls and stop talking about 9/11.
Terrorists are like some dogs. All T’s are a menace to human beings and some D’s are a hazard to us dogs. But not everyone and not all Muslims are out to kill us patriots. They want to worship as they choose. Hate mongers spread this misinformation because they want everybody to live in fear, to get stirred up and to see a terrorist behind every tree. Live and let live. Worship as you like. Get out of the way so others can do the same. I love these bozos who preach First Amendment rights except when it interferes with their bully pulpit.
Why is it that when there is a disaster like Katrina, or Haiti or Pakistan, that everybody rallies around, never blinking an eye when the U.S. sends billions of greenbacks to help those in need? Everybody gets behind humanitarian causes. Disasters bring out the best in Democrats and Republicans, Christians, Catholics and Jews. But you let the president of the 50 states pass health care reform so that the poorest can get medical attention, or mention raising taxes to pay for better education across the board and the political demagogues want to impeach him. Go figure. From this four-legged point of view, somebody needs to get Judge Judy stirred up. I love it when she says, “I’m smarter than you on my dumbest day.” When Daddy uses her line on his clients, the Great Unwashed make a shift, as do the defendants in Judge Judy’s TV courtroom. From my view closer to the floor, there are a lot of mean and nasty people who think it is all about them and their almighty dollar. Soon all of this will change. Soon the other shoe will drop and then let’s see who does what when there is greater parity, or as some would say, a redistribution of wealth.
On a lighter note, Scott and Alison and mon père went to the theater to see The Return of Nanny McPhee. Daddy kept repeating, “I’m Nanny McPhee. Little `c,’ big `P.’” I was trying to get their attention by vibing, “I’m Mr. Darby. Big `M,’ big ‘D,’” but nobody was paying me any mind.
And as always, we get back to poo. Mon père was having fits of joy and ecstasy when I made a big poo in the parking lot that same day. God, if I had known how Dada would get off on my poo I would strain to do it more often. No matter how much Scott tells him to quit getting mad at me if I don’t go to the bathroom on a walk, Daddy still gets his underpants in a wad if I don’t “go.” Scott reprimands him, “How would you like it if someone was always saying, `When are you going to the bathroom?’ `Why haven’t you eliminated this morning, il principe?’” He is very anal but he is getting better.
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