Tag: dog humor

Pepper Goes to Camp

On March 13, 2013

Today when I went walking with my friend at the park, we saw a mini yellow school bus with several moms hovering around. The driver backed down the steps in the doorway of the bus. He was holding two leashes.

“Whoa,” I said to my friend. “Isn’t that, uh, politically incorrect to put kids on a lease?”

“Cha-yeah,” Laurie snorted. Then the noses of two dogs appeared at the end of the leashes. We stopped to gawk.

“Here you go,” the driver said to a woman who stepped forward. “They both did very well, but you know Pepper cheats at poker.”

“Oh, I know,” she said, laughing. “Whenever he and the other dogs play, he usually ends up with all their dog biscuits.” The other moms chuckled and nodded.

A Dog’s Best Friend

By Suzanne Olsen

On November 7, 2012

In Pets

I went to Tennessee to visit relatives a few weeks ago, and at my cousin Nancy’s house in Memphis, we sat in her family room to catch up. I stretched my legs out on the ottoman and threw a throw over them, and within seconds Nancy’s two dogs were hovering at my feet begging with their big brown eyes to get on my lap. I invited Sweet Tater up – she’s the one looking at the camera. She’s named Sweet Tater because she’s so fat she looks like a sweet potato with four toothpicks stuck in the bottom.

The other dog, who’s still a puppy, couldn’t stand that he wasn’t part of the party, so he jumped up too. They took a couple of minutes to position themselves just so, and then both pretended to go to sleep.

My cousin took this photo of her two dogs curled up in my lap – she obviously didn’t care if I was in the picture – it was all about the dogs

I am a great friend of almost all dogs. I like to think it’s because they sense that I am a warm and kind person, but most likely it’s because I know exactly how they like to be scratched.

The dogs I’ve met love to have their ears scratched – but not the ear itself – the part under the ear. No, not in the ear. I guess you’d call it the side of their head under the ear. Massage that area and they will groan their pleasure like a starving Italian man eating pasta.

They also like to be scratched between their front legs and will lie feet up on jagged rocks for hours as long as you continue to scratch them. You have to move your hand around, though. You can’t absent-mindedly scratch a hole in their chests. I’ve seen people do this – not a real hole, but just rhythmically moving the fingers while they’re preoccupied with something else. The dog won’t want them to quit, but will inch itself forward or back to present a new area that’s not rubbed raw.

The other place a dog likes to be scratched is right above the tail. They’ll contort themselves, hunching up and twisting toward the side of the tail you’re scratching while cocking their heads sideways. They look miserable all corkskrewed like that, but they’ll stay there until you get bored so it must feel pretty good.

I actually think it’s an honor that dogs are attracted to me, and that I know how to make them happy. A dog is easy to please and so forgiving when your don’t get things just so. I wish it were that way with people.

My Dog’s Frito Feet

By Suzanne Olsen

On October 29, 2011

In Food, Pets

My little dog’s feet smell like Fritos. She’s lying beside me as I type on my laptop on the sofa, and she just changed positions. The smell of Fritos wafted into the air like incense.

My family thinks the dog’s feet smell pleasant. Fritos is a pleasant odor. On the other hand, our personal human feet are disgusting, especially when they’ve been in sweaty shoes. Perhaps that’s the problem. If we did not wear footwear for hours on end, would we also have pleasant smelling feet?

This is for future pondering because we want to focus on the dog’s feet right now and ask the question, how on earth did a dog’s feet come to smell like a packaged corn chip?

A corn chip is made of corn and salt all smashed together, baked until it has that perfect crunch, and sealed in a bag that is impossible for humans to penetrate without a sharp object or very, very strong teeth. It used to be that you’d get a guy to open a lid for you, but now you have to find a guy to get into a bag of chips. Sometimes, if there’s no guy handy, I’ve had to tear at these bags with my teeth like a savage jackal, over and over, getting a small bit of bag each time, spitting it out and tearing some more until I gnaw a hole big enough to plunge my fist through.

So the grains and salts and other things that go into a corn chip – the chemical composition as it were – and the baking, which alters or at least dehydrates the chemicals – and the packaging which protects the baked chip until the year 4010 because air doesn’t have the teeth to penetrate the seal – how in the universe can THAT smell like my dog’s feet?

My dog’s feet always smell like Fritos except just after a bath. Within a day, the Frito feet are back – all four of them. The rest of the dog may be foul from rolling in dead rodent to try to get the clean shampoo smell off, but those feet are pleasant.

It’s a mystery someone needs to solve, because there is something very, very sick about smelling a dog’s feet and immediately craving Fritos and cream cheese.

If you’ve never tried it, take a normal Frito – not the big ones – and scrape it through a container of Philadelphia cream cheese. It’s quite tasty. Don’t go in too deep or the Frito will break off. BEWARE – you will go through a whole container of cream cheese pretty quick and become a big fat lard because you won’t have the willpower to stop eating them, they’re that good.

Back to the subject, which is, why does my dog have Frito feet? If you know the answer, please don’t hesitate to send it to me via a package containing Fritos. I’m running low.

The Drive to the Airport

By Suzanne Olsen

On October 7, 2011

In Uncategorized

I took my coworker and her husband to the airport this morning. I hadn’t met her husband yet, and I wanted to make a good impression. I knew I was taking my little dog with me, and she often smells like a goat. The beast rolls in everything. She cannot go outside without flopping on her back and wiggling from side to side, all four legs in the air, grinding herself into some foul smelling dead thing. I’ve seen her roll on a squished earthworm – any creature that has departed this world she will sniff out and have her back smeared in it in nanoseconds. She has to do it quick because I’ll see her through the window and yell at her to stop. She pretends she can’t hear me long enough to get coated in the stench, then jumps up and looks at me like, “You talkin’ to me?”

So this morning I gave her a couple of squirts of some cheap flowery smelling stuff of my daughter’s. My husband is allergic to scents so I don’t have any of my own perfumes.

When I squirted that fine mist of smell over the dog, she was so insulted. She took off running like I’d poured hot water on her and started rubbing against the walls, trying to get the smell off. She nosed down into the carpet and pressed one side of her face and shoulder then the other into the rug in a pitiful attempt to try and scrape the scent off.

I’m not sure why a dog can’t stand to smell good. Not this one, anyway. If I let her outside after a bath, she streaks to the grass and starts rolling to get the smell of dirt on her. She comes back in with half the back yard clinging to her long wet hair. You can’t comb it off, it’s woven in and half the time it’s sticky – why I don’t know. But as she walks through the house it drops all over the floor like autumn leaves. It looks like someone’s scattered brown and green confetti all over every floor in the house.

Laws of physics that state: a 10 pound, 12 inch tall dog with long black hair will collect 30 times the squared surface area of its body in yard debris consisting of tiny sticks, brown grass, and little maple helicopters. Double the formula if the place where the dog rolls is under a sappy fir tree like the ones covering our back yard.

So when I left the house to pick up my coworker, this dog that normally smells like a goat because it’s not practical to give her a bath every five minutes – this dog smelled like a cheap tramp. When we got in the car, the whole place filled with the sweet smell of Eau de Trollop. I discovered I didn’t have any gum and I hadn’t brushed my teeth for fear of being late. Then I put on some “unscented” lotion (yeah, right!) that added an acrid element to the mix.

When my passengers got in the car, the husband, who I just met, immediately rolled down his window, even though it was raining. The dog, who loves fresh air, jumped into the backseat to sit on his lap, coating his jeans in that perfumed hussy goat smell that probably lingered throughout their whole 15 hour flight to Brazil.

I’m not sure we made a good impression.

Sweet Smelling Dogs

By Suzanne Olsen

On August 26, 2010

In Pets

I had to give my dog a bath just now. When I say the word, “bath,” she tucks her tail and heads for the farthest place in the house.

Today after I it, I followed her to the laundry room, her tail tucked, head hung low, resigned to her fate, buying time leading our little parade through the house.

Since she’s so small, I can wash her in the deep sink. She stares up at me with her dark brown eyes and it’s like she’s saying, “Why are you doing this to me, momma? What did I do wrong? Didn’t you tell me I was the best dog in the world? Don’t I always greet you with joy, even when you’ve just gone to the bathroom?”

After the bath she runs through the house and rubs her nose and the side of her body against all the furniture like a cat on speed. She’ll bend her head down and plow her face along the carpet, switching sides. She acts wild and throws a ball in the air or snaps at our heels. It’s all quite entertaining, but I still feel sorry for her while the bathing is in progress.

Wait, I have a pitiful story to tell about her. She’s pretty smart so we have to spell things around her. After awhile she understands the spelled words, too. She picks up tricks quickly, too. One thing I’ve been teaching her lately is to “stay.” She sits for a little but will usually get up and follow me if I go around a corner out of sight.

I have started working full-time and I’ve been taking her to the office with me. She loves it. People talk baby talk to her and give her scratches, so she can’t wait to go in the morning.

Yesterday I had a commitment first thing, so I wasn’t going straight to the office. She had been following me through the house, worried I’d forget to take her with me, and I finally said to her in the living room, “I’m sorry, honey, but you’re going to have to stay here this morning.” She immediately sat down, all pitiful like, because that’s the words I use to tell her she’s not going to get to go somewhere and she understands. Brilliant dog, that one.

She quit following at my heels, and I told her I was sorry again and rushed off to dry my hair. When I came back into the living room about five minutes later, the poor thing was still sitting there, as if to say, “See, momma, I did exactly what you told me to do. Please take me with you.” She’d heard that one word in there, “stay” and was being obedient.

Now you’re probably thinking that I need to see a shrink about talking to my dog, and you’re right. But she understands what I’m saying. Furthermore, she doesn’t argue, talk back, put me down, complain, or ask me for money or my car keys. There’s no one else in this house that does that.

Now I have a nice, clean, sweet-smelling dog curled up at my feet, and life is good – as long as she doesn’t start passing gas. Oh my gosh, her SBD’s live up to their name. Ghastly! (get it, “gas” tley).

Not laughing? My dog thinks it’s funny – she just told me so.

A Douse of Reality

By Suzanne Olsen

On August 10, 2010

In Pets

We were going to the beach to celebrate my dog’s birthday – a tradition – but she’d been drinking a lot of water so I called the vet, who suspected an infection and asked me to bring in a urine sample. I followed my little dog around with a Tupperware container, bent over because she’s less than a foot tall, and entreated her to, “Go potty, go potty.”

She ignored me, too busy checking out the rib bones scattered all over the backyard. It looks like a cannibal picnic area. When my husband has ribs, he gives the bones to the dog – he thinks it makes her like him more. Everyone in this family competes to get the dog to hang out with them, but she alway chooses me.

Finally she squatted and I pushed the container between her legs and managed to get a few drops. We left the sample at the vet on the way to the beach. The vet said she’d run the test and call with the results later in the day.

Seaside is about an hour and a half drive, and we kept giving the dog lots of water because that’s what Google said to do for a bladder infection. We were almost there, laughing, the dog sitting on my lap, my daughter and her boyfriend happy about going to the beach, when I felt something warm.

Then everything went into slow motion – I experienced the feeling with a curious response (hmmm, wonder why the dog got warm all of a sudden….?), then I felt the sensation of warm liquid between my legs, and the horror of realizing that the dog had peed on me. Two gallons of doggie pee gushed out of the beast and ran between my legs before I had the presence of mind to grab a beach towel. Oh my gosh, I can’t tell you awful it felt.

Even worse – I didn’t have a change of clothes, nor did I have another driver’s seat to replace the one soaking up all that pee. I was literally sitting in a pee puddle.

When we got to Seaside a few minutes later, I traipsed in and out of the stores with a huge wet stain between my legs trying to find something to wear that didn’t have “SEASIDE” scrawled across the ass. It took me a good part of the day to find something I was willing to wear, to clean myself and the car using containers of baby wipes while I kept checking with the vet and finally got a dog prescription filled, and got the pill down the dog, all while my daughter and her boyfriend were off having fun.

On the way home, nobody wanted the dog on their lap, especially me. I bought another beach towel as insurance in the event of another accident and resigned myself to her being there. We stopped often to give her every chance to go somewhere besides on me.

I learned a lesson from the whole thing. It would be nice if I could remember it. Regardless, whenever you feel like life is getting you down or things aren’t going your way, just think about me getting peed on in my car and maybe that will lighten your heart. The reality is that if life throws pee on your crotch, you’re not alone, sweetie. You’re not alone.

Doggie Barf-o-Matic

By Suzanne Olsen

On June 20, 2010

In Pets

My dog goes into these cycles where she throws up constantly, and she’s in one right now. My husband was peacefully curled up on the couch watching TV when I heard him bellow, “Awg, the dog barfed on the couch.”

I jumped up because I’m the designated dog throw-up remover, since I was the one who wanted the dog. I found a slimy wet pile with a streak where his bare foot had carved a path like the wake of a boat. He limped off to scour the foot with bleach, and I cleaned up the 100^th pile of the day.

We don’t know why she gets this way. She can go days without even burping, and then one day I wake up to the sound of her stomach. It’s growls so loud – it sounds like something fierce and miserable is alive in there, and it’s got a microphone.

Later, she doesn’t eat her food. This is a very bad sign. She tries to bury the food with her nose. She pretends to cover it with fake dirt, and her nose keeps hitting the bowl, lifting it in the air so that it comes down with a bang like hard plastic dropping on hard tile. This goes on forever. I realize she has instincts that are causing her “bury” the uneaten food lest some wild animal appear and scarf it up, but can’t she see that there is no dirt?

Nine times out of ten, if she doesn’t eat, it means her stomach is really upset and she’ll be expunging all of yesterday’s food for the next several hours. She goes outside and eats grass, which I’ve heard is supposed to soothe the stomach but for her it’s like turbo emesis. FYI emesis is the Greek word for vomit. Barf is the Latin word. Ralph is the French word.

When the vomit fountain starts flowing, it comes out in erratic spurts. Sometimes there’s just a spot here and there. Others, there is a pool that frogs could play in. Birds could take a bath in there, and so on. For a 9-pound dog, she’s got quite a reservoir.

The carpet looks like it’s got land mines all over it. I wipe them quickly with some anti-doggie germ stuff but the evidence lingers for hours until it dries. Everyone who has come to our house has either witnessed her throwing up, or has been the victim of a barf blast. My brother was over the other day and decided to rest his back by lying on the floor. He started to lay his head down but paused, looking around. “I bet there’s not one square inch of this carpet that hasn’t been covered in that dog’s throw up.”

“Yeah, and more than once,” I said. He put his head down anyway, and the dog jumped on his stomach and promptly threw up a white, slimy pile on his crotch.

“Oh my gosh, that looks just like…” I didn’t say any more because I’m making this part up. But all the other stuff I’ve written is true, if you can believe that.

I asked my daughter, “What should I blog about?” and she said, as she dodged one of the wet piles, “Write about that dog barfing.” So I did. Hope you enjoyed it. If you ever come to my house, don’t take off your shoes, and guard your crotch.