Posted Tuesday, April 04, 2006 by Gene

Jumbo sized dog
Talking to the wife last night, we both agreed it's time we started getting our dog some exercise. No, that's not a euphemism for something else, although we were discussing this while in bed. Our dog Penny, who is a mix between a beagle and some sort of larger dog like a spaniel or a doberman-- a mutt, in other words-- is so huge I've taken to calling her Jabba.

We have a reclining chair in our living room that can also rotate 360 degrees, and this is the chair she often ends up taking, but you should see the process involved. First, she has to prepare herself for the jump, which involves taking a dozen cautionary baby-steps to find the proper angle-- because when she jumps her clearance is about two inches, and when she misses she ends up with her hind legs dangling off the edge of the chair and all her weight on her ribcage. (The process she undergoes to get up the stairs at night takes five times as long.) Second, after she's worked out the physics necessary-- applied force, angle of ascent, gravity-- to get her fat ass into the chair, she jumps and impacts the chair sufficiently to rotate it 180 degrees. Now she's facing the wall and whining, so we have to get up and spin the chair back so she doesn't miss her stories.

I realized last night, after letting her in back to do her business, that very soon her weight will be a threat to me personally. Because someday those little legs of hers will no longer get her down the back staircase and outside, and I'll be forced to carry a sixty pound dog who doesn't like to be carried and is full of fecal matter down the stairs to keep her from crapping in the pantry, and about halfway down I'll throw my back out and drop the dog, who will immediately evacuate her bowels herself in fear. They'll find both of us hours later, lying on the steps, unable to move, and covered in dogshit. And being laughed at by the cats.

No comment
As I write this, it may be fixed, but as of an hour or so ago, the comments option in this blog was busted. Tamson was the last one to get a comment in, and when I replied my response vanished into the internet netherverse, which can be found at Brigadoon.com. When this has happened in the past, the vanishing posts appeared one or two days later when the commenting function returned to normal. I expect that will be what ends up happening again.