WAYS TO KILL YOUR DOG

My dog, Sophie, is awesome. You may remember her from a weirdo thought bubble, but probably not. I don't believe you remember much about thought bubbles.

If, by chance, you do remember a lot about thought bubbles, you should send me your favorite one, especially if it's a homemade weirdo thought bubble. I'll post it one day. I promise. Pinky swear.

Anyway, back to Sophie. She is awesome and I love her and I figured she'd like to ride on my motorcycle. There are a surprising amount of products for motorcycle doggies online, which are probably better than some of my ideas, but mine are cheaper. Cheaper is better. Mostly. Well, at least for my wallet. My first thought was to go to the pet store by my house. If anyone would know about pets and motorcycle safety it would be the pet store. Right? Wrong.

I asked the dude if he had any kind of harness I could strap to my body, like a papoose holder or something. He thought he might, so I followed him telling him my ideas. He stopped walking. His brow lowered. His eyes darkened. It was suddenly apparent that he was not going to help me find a safety device for my dog. "Dogs should never be on a motorcycle. There is no way to make that safe. Why don't you just wrap a jump rope around its neck and tie it to the fan before you go out of town, you crazy bitch." Ok, maybe he didn't say that last part, but it was in his eyes.

It was time for plan B. The interwebz. I searched for motorcycle safety equipment for dogs and found a variety of wonderful products like this, and this, and THIS! Some of it costs quite a bit. If my dog needed a surgery that cost as much as these things I'd have to curl up in a ball and berate myself as I watched the vet inject her with the blue juice. Well, I guess I could have a fundraiser. Anyway, the online products gave me some ideas and I figured I'd try to make them myself.

This idea failed. Why? Because I have absolutely no follow through whatsoever and ended up watching back to back episodes of Law and Order SVU. I love Mariska Hargitay. She's a badass.

I finally decided to use some weird bag I found in the garage and only take her a few blocks. She LOVED it!

I don't even think she got bugs in her eyes. She even got to hang out at the cofeeshop and get petted by strangers. It was a blast.

All this was beautiful, until my wife decided to open her mean ginger head mouth and make me cry.

We were at a different coffee shop on a different day, because we used to drink a lot of coffee (although she quit drinking caffeine because her doctor told her to, and I quit in solidarity, until I relapsed a month later) and I was talking about how ingenius it was to bring Sophie on the bike. Then she said it. The evil gingery sadist spoke. This is what she said.

GINGER CRAP HEAD: "It's cute until she falls off. She's going to fall off on the highway and die."

POOR INNOCENT ME: "No she's not!"

THE EVIL WHORE: "You know she's not going to live forever. You should just get used to thinking of her as a red smear on the road."

I burst into tears and began laughing hysterically at the same time. I don't cry, ya'll. Not in public anyway. She was just teasing and the thought of poor dead as dead Sophie had me blubbering like an eight year old who crapped his pants in elementary school. I'm surprised I'm not crying right now, although my lower lip is pushed out. I'm not smiling, guys. Poor Sophie. I THOUGHT "Danger" was her middle name.

Every few weeks the redheaded satan brings it up again. We'll be cuddling or eating pie or talking about Being Human, and she'll say it. She's going to die. Those four words have me in a mess of tears.

She's not going to die. But just in case, no more motorcycle.

P.S. I actually have 2 dogs. The other one, Nunzio, is awesome too, but in a SLOWLY awesome way.




THIS POST WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY NUNZIO

Sugar Cookies: INTENTION vs. REALITY----or----I'm Sorry My Dogs Run on Your Ceiling

I have 2 dogs. They are pretty cool. I like hanging out with them. They like to play fight, bark at passersby, and eat and stuff. Pretty much they are like most dogs I guess, but they are kind of loud and I live in an apartment complex. To add to their loudness, I keep odd hours and sometimes come home really late. They don't care if it's 5pm or 2am when I get home, they just care that I'm back and they have to reach deep into their doggy souls to let me know how excited they are that I'm home, and by-the-way-mom-we-have-to-pee-really-badly-so-let-us-out-bark-bark-BARK-BARK-TAZMANIAN-DEVIL-SOUNDS! That has to be annoying for my downstairs neighbor, but what am I to do?

To add to the chaos, when they get back inside after walking in several circles before finding the perfect place to drop a deuce, they take it upon themselves to run back and forth summoning the noises of elephant stampedes and drum and bass music. Apparently my neighbor had enough and told the leasing office staff at my apartment complex.

I wasn't angry. I actually feel pretty crappy about my dogs making so much noise, but I just haven't gotten to a point where I'm okay with duct taping their feet together and tying their mouths shut with zip ties. I decided that the best thing to do was to make homemade cookies and deliver them to #1204 with an apologetic smile and charm. This is how it was supposed to go.

Of course, that isn't how it went. We are talking about my life. This is what actually happened.

Then I mixed all the ingredients. Things seemed to be going well.

I put them in the preheated oven and waited. When I pulled out my delicious I'm-sorry-my-dogs-run-on-your-ceiling sugar cookies, they didn't look quite right. First of all, they hadn't risen. Secondly, some of them were brown instead of white, like normal sugar cookies. "Well I'm never using that recipe again," I thought. A normal person would have tried them to see if they were edible, but me and normal don't coincide often. Currently I'm on this sugar moderation kick that involves me only getting to eat sugar when my girlfriend gives it to me. On the plus side I limit my intake of sugar while simultaneously making my girlfriend appear to be even sweeter than she is. On the down side, I'm militant about the rule and thus could not taste test the cookies. They were warm and sweet and free. She woudn't complain, right? So I was off to deliver them and make my amends.

After knocking enough times that if she was trying to ignore me, I only made things worse, I considered placing the tin of cookies on her doorstep with a note of apology. I scratched that idea after I realized that the cookies might very well be eaten by a stray dog that liked to walk up stairs, or even worse, she would not know they were there and trip on them on her way out of the house, causing her to fall down the stairs, break her neck and die a slow painful death due to exposure in the cold conditions. I didn't need that on my conscience, so I decided to leave them with the apartment manager at the leasing office.

After leaving the leasing office, I was filled with that self satisfaction that only comes with doing something nice for someone expecting others to think you're a super person. You should have seen the look on the apartment manager's face as she held that tin, still warm and filling the office with the aroma of sweetness.

At this point, I was imagining receiving the Nobel Prize for superb neighbory, or at least special mention in the apartment newsletter. Throughout the day I mentioned my good deed to several people. Then, hours later, it hit me. I didn't put the egg in the batter. I DIDN'T PUT THE EGG IN THE BATTER!!!

No wonder the cookies didn't rise. Those eggless chips of burnt sugar were not going to win me points. What if she choked on the dry crumbs of my disgusting-to-the-point-of being-the-equivalent-of-rat-poison cookies? What if she chipped her tooth, vomited from disgust, or went missing for several days until the smell of death brought maintenence crashing through her door only to find a half eaten tin of cookies (aka poison) with my fingerprints on it?

I should've broken the rule! I should've eaten one! She could've been saved! Oh cruel, cruel world! Why must I suffer from such shame and guilt? I was just trying to apologize! I don't want to go to jail! I'M TOO PRETTY!!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Wait. One. Second. Maybe she hasn't eaten them yet. I can go on YouTube and learn how to pick a lock, sneak into her kitchen and replace the scary cookies of death with some sweet apology cookies. Cookies of LIFE. Then if she really did pass into the netherworld I can bring her back, or I can just call 9-1-1 and be the hero who discovered the poor dead woman in #1204. I let you know how it turns out.