Highlights and lowlights of dog ownership

Not a Meathead Monday post, but hopefully the pupdate will make up for it.  Donate button is to ya right and will be used for peanut butter for Bailey.

The Majestic Bailey has now been a part of our household for 6 months, and not to brag, but she is absolutely killing it as a dog.  Just top-notch dog behavior.  She is the cutest thing in the entire world and has gotten a little bit bigger and she needs to be able to go to the dog park like, yesterday.  Seriously, please wish for warmer weather because she misses her friends and needs to drag race them.  She has made a friend named Lola at our complex’s small dog park and they run around so good, which helps a lot, but I want to take her where there are like 30 dogs.

We have lucked out enormously with her behavior- and difficulty-wise, and while I love all dogs, I am very thankful that she is 85% chill.  She doesn’t bark (she has barked maybe 20 times in 6 months and it has nearly always been because we were sassing her); she is chill with all other dogs and all other people; she came to us housebroken and had one accident her first week and that was on us because we were like “you just went out you don’t have to go again” SPOILER ALERT she DID have to go again; she is a very good eater and isn’t picky; she is crate-trained, and while we do our best to have her out of there as much as possible she goes in without protest; she is Supremely Unbothered by literally everything.  She is…not small, so it is like, a lotta dog in our not-huge house, and she can get mouthy sometimes, but she’s just a very good girl who gets excited.

There are certain highlights and lowlights of doggie ownership that are somewhat universal.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Pup cuddles
  • The fact that doggos are warmer than humans means that hugging her is like hugging a soft heated body pillow that is also the cutest flippin’ thing in the world
    • Starting at like 10:30 PM she becomes Floppo Doggo and is just like sleepy and happy and will let me flip up her ears and pet her and she is SO WARM AND SOFT AND I JUST
      • EEEEEE
        • PUP
          • CUDDLES
            • I JUST WANT TO SQUISH HER ENTIRE BODY VIOLENTLY
  • I slept on the couch with her one night and she curled up by my feet and gently placed her head on my leg and I swear in that moment, we were infinite

• People coming up to say hi to her
  • I thought this was gonna be super difficult, because I am frequently out in the world and like “please don’t interact with me in any way at all” but it has been remarkably lovely to have people ask to say hi to Baileypup
    • All the questions they ask are about her, not me, and my only focus is basically trying to keep her pup-thusiasm to a minimum so she doesn’t paw print anyone’s neck
      • Also they tell her she is so pretty and I directly inject that compliment into my veins like I have anything to do with her attractiveness
        • SHE IS SUPER PRETTY THO
• Making up dog songs and goofy nicknames
  • If you have a dog and don’t say illogical shit to them at least 20 times a day you are not living your best life
    • Bailey, Baileroo, Bailerooni, Baileypup, Bay Leaf, Bailiff, Baileybutt (thank you Adrienne!), Hay Bay Bay, Small Wolf, Baingel (that is Bailey plus Angel, thank you Jennifer!), Pupperoni, Pupface McGee, Monster Dog, Poochy Pup, Ya Doofus (usually after she’s basically run head-first into the door)
      • *quietly* it is also extremely refreshing to call your dog a jerk when they are being a jerk because they do not get emotionally compromised and sometimes they are being a jerk
        • “stop being a dick,” “Bailey, you are being an asshole,” “you little shit” etc etc
          • It’s fine, forreals, you don’t have to like, set a time aside to chat with your dog and tell them that “when you bit at the couch cushion for the 8th time after I told you how it made me feel, I then became frustrated, and I know we had been working on expressing our feelings, and I just felt you were not being the most supportive dog that you could be”
            • “BAILEY, YOU JERKFACE, NO” is cathartic and works
  • I have also, of course, made up roughly six thousand covers of songs with her name and habits injected into them
    • The shortest has been to the State Farm jingle: like a good doggie, Bailey is heeeeere 
    • The uh, weirdest and most Me one is to the Gummi Bears theme song
      • Puppy dog / Bouncing here and there and on a log / please increase your walking to a jog / she is a puppy dog 
        • I’m sorry, I really am

• Watching them play with whatever toy or thing they like
  • This might not be true for every single dog, but nearly all dogs are just exceptional mammals while they are doing the toy thing
    • Chewing on chew toys is fun, because you have this adorable domesticated furry pillow with soft ears and a silly hangy tongue and then they start chewing and you get like a Call of the Wild heartfear and you recall that they are descended from wolves and are just wrecking the dang thing like a hyena crossed with The Predator
    • Varieties of fetch are also just A+, because you get to either watch or be a grown human who is playing an entirely different game than their pet is
      • Human playing – let’s tire the dog out, let’s try to make the dog bring a thing back, let’s do a game where I stand in one place, let’s get my dumbass pet to drop the dumbass ball instead of keeping it in their dumbass mouth
      • Dog playing – I CAN CHASE INFINITELY, I CAN BRING MY HUMAN’S FAVORITE THING BACK TO THEM, I GET TO RUN SO FAR AND SO FAST AND THEN DO IT AGAIN, I CAN MAKE MY HUMAN FOLLOW ME AROUND BUT NEVER GET CLOSER THAN SIX INCHES FROM MY JAWS, I CAN MAKE A TENNIS BALL THE MOST REPULSIVE SWAMPSPHERE YOU’VE EVER TOUCHED
  • Dog playtime can certainly range from lawful good to chaotic good but the important thing here is that it is always Good

 

LOWLIGHTS

• Walkies in the weather
  • It’s just the worst, guys
    • She doesn’t particularly care for the first minute or so, and does the dog head-ducking-and-squinting thing, but then she is like, all in with this rain thing, and then she is jaunty and splashy and despite having a perfectly good water bowl that we keep filled with crisp, cool water she will want to find the grossest puddle in the world and eagerly lap it up while I stand there like goddamn Clint Eastwood in Bridges of Madison County
    • She also loves snow, absolutely loves it
      • And this is usually fine! She is a precious adorable soft thing and is even precious-er while frolicking, but sometimes this sucks
        • When it was zero degrees out for a week straight, there was still snow on the ground, and she was still thrilled, and just, thank God we domesticated dogs because this doofus would have been out there until her paws froze off
          • “Look I can nudge my NOSE IN IT and I can KICK IT and it will FLY into the AIR”
• Bruises
  • like everywhere???? all the time???
    • She is not a particularly nippy dog, but she is only a year old, and she’s probably about 55-60 pounds now, and that is all concentrated into four stilts with needles on ’em and flank muscle, and I just have so many bruises on my arms all the time
      • Legs, too, for when she gets so psyched to play with you that she jumps directly into your lap
    • She also frequently picks up big sticks and turns with them and doesn’t understand that she’s like, clotheslining your shins
      • They are 97% not mean and/or my fault (I need to look at her when I’m holding a toy of hers because she will chomp the part I am holding) but yeah my body is just green and blue and purple all the time
        • Bailey and the Amazing Technicolor Bruisecoat

• Playing “what is in your mouth”
  • Objectively the worst game, worse than Monopoly, worse than Pictionary when you can’t draw and are socially anxious, worse than Settlers of Catan with people who have weirdly specific house rules and use them to screw over newcomers, worse than “why is the check engine light on”
    • Everything that a dog has in their mouth is the most important thing that has ever been theirs and they would rather die than give it up
    • This isn’t always a disaster, because “what do you have in your mouth” might just be like, a stick, or a small piece of lint, or something else pretty innocuous that they can either chomp on and spit out or eat without consequences
      • And then sometimes the winning answer to “what is in your mouth” is “a desiccated mole carcass” and you don’t realize until Today’s Prize is fully grasped in your hand and then you swallow your scream and launch the prize into the trees and your dog believes we are now playing fetch with Death Comes to The Wind in the Willows so she yanks on her leash real hard and just
        • 0/10 would not experience again
    • Stop chomping everything, puppo, please

ANYWAY that is the State of the Bailey.  She’s beauty and she’s grace, she’ll fall right on her face.  She is soft and great and I love her forever.