Take this dog and blog it

When The Missus accepted her cool new job offer recently, she asked me what we’d have to do to make the impending move more palatable for me. After only a slight hesitation I said that if we have to move to a new city, away from my established comfort-zone and the one little friend I’d made in the nearly ten years we’ve been out here, I wanted to do it without the dog. Just hate that dog. We discussed it and kind of left the issue on the table.



Shortly thereafter, however, it occurred to me that had been a particularly shitty thing to do. After all, I made a big deal of renouncing the dog and officially giving it to her over a year ago. And now I’m telling her she has to leave HER DOG behind when we move?



Dick Move. Big time. I’d kick anybody’s ass who told me I had to move but I couldn’t bring my dog. Back when I had a dog.



So it occurred to me to offer her an alternative option. Give the dog back to me and give me free, full rein and let me see if I can’t fix his behavioral issues.

(Quick re-cap: He’s big and clumsy and sneaky and fast, has bitten houseguests before—from inside his steel-barred crate!—misbehaves to get attention and can’t be trusted around food, trash or bio-hazardous materials. He’s one of those stupid fucking animals other people own who will eat anything, especially non-food items. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking when I named him Obi, when he was clearly going to grow up to be Darth Vader. He even looks the part; see pic, above.)

The linchpin of the New Master Plan For Obi depended on The Missus getting as Draconian on his ass as I am. That’s why he respects me and is the Ideal Dog whenever The Missus is not home. The Boy and I take zero shit from him, and he behaves around us. The Missus used to constantly upbraid him for transgressions then return to what she was doing, without having dispensed any justice. I explained to her, the stupid dog thinks you two are playing a game, like fetch. He brings you one of my socks and you shower him with Big Attention then he goes and gets another sock, repeat ad infinitum. He’s in stupid-dog nirvana.



I told her, in order for us to “salvage” this dog (the word I used), she and I have to mete out punishment equally, for even the slightest offense. Anything he does that’s the least bit off-track and he gets yelled at angrily and banished to his cage and doesn’t get out for at least a half hour. The punishment has to far exceed the transgression for this method of training to work.



And since we started a couple weeks ago, she’s been holding up her part of the bargain great. He’s had lots of quality cage time, looking confused as hell. I feel more like a warden than ever. I wonder if she would agree to shock therapy…

For me of course.



I told her, we can have him trained in a year if she can keep it up. Just imagine if we can salvage this dog! What an amazing accomplishment that would be.



And for my part of the deal, I would begin treating him like he was my dog again. Feeding him scraps, giving him the left-over milk from my cereal bowl, and stopping to pet him and say nice things when I pass through the front room. It’s hard to remember after all this time what it was like to have a dog.

The Boy remarked the other day that Daddy was being nice to Obi and Mommy was being mean. I outlined the new Program for him and we had a good laugh about it. Mission on its way to being Accomplished!

So that’s where we’re at. The In-Laws were out this weekend and after barking furiously at them for five minutes, The Stupid Dog had drawn blood (by accident, see “clumsy” in the text above) and the victim was excusing the dog, forgiving him. I had made the mistake of not filling them in on the New Master Plan For Obi and by then it was too late. I don’t think they would have signed on anyhow. They probably wouldn’t have liked the part about: In this house, forgiving the dog is between me and my God and nobody else. Even the dog doesn’t have anything to say about it.

He’s being great today, as usual. Everyone’s gone and he’s reverted back to being man’s best friend. The test will come tonight. Will The Missus’ outraged cries of “Obi, NO!!” be followed by the clatter of the cage door slamming shut or the dull thump-bump-ump of The Stupid Dog bouncing off the walls with reckless abandon?

I’m betting he has a lot of quality cage time to look forward to.