Yellow Mustard Blog

Life with my puppy Herve has been good, for the most part. I think being a pet-owner changes you; I for one have developed an inexplicable interest in infomercials for products with names like "Urine-Gone". This is something I don't think I would have had before Herve. Well, maybe...but not as much.

Herve has also taught me the meaning of patience....meaning, when you have a puppy, you don't have any patience. Ahahaha. Seriously though, I don't know WHY I feel that saying "No" fifteen times to Herve will somehow have more impact than just saying it once. But I guess I've convinced myself that the 10th to 15th "No!" is really the one that will sink in.
He's like, "What? What are you saying? 'Dough'?
Say it a few more times? Oh, 'Nooo', ok I get it now. I'm glad you repeated it 13 times, I wouldn't have caught that otherwise."

But honestly, it's like Herve is autistic. He's completely in his own little dog world, and it requires me screaming like a threatened cow two inches from his face to get him to snap out of it and stop whatever he's doing. I don't know what's going on in his little pea-brain, but I think its something like, "Sniffsniffsniffsniffsniffsniff*mustlickmyself*sniffniffsniff".

Fortunately (for him) there is something that's just so damn endearing about how dumb my dog is. He'll have found a way to scale my kitchen table and get up on top of my laptop, and when I walk in, he just gives me a look like, "Wow. I honestly have no idea how I got up here. Seriously...I think I must have blacked out or something. I'm not even sure why I'm on your laptop. I am just as dumbfounded as you are."
And I can't yell at him, I can only marvel at how such a dumb dog has survived evolution.

And that's why I love dogs, really. We're equals, and when I run into a door because I'm walking towards it too fast to turn the doorknob in time, my dog doesn't ridicule me. He just looks at me like, "Man, I do that ALL the time."

Cats on the other hand, piss me off. They're just so freaking smug. I think I don't like cats because they're smarter than I am, and we're both painfully aware of that. And while I would NEVER laugh at a cat that perhaps got it's head stuck in a plastic bag, cats are not above staring at me condescendingly while I slice my hand open on one of their damn Fancy Feast catfood tins. They "meow" and it means, "God, you humans and your fat primative opposable thumbs. I can't believe you're serving me this food in a glass goblet. It's catfood for God's sake! Have some dignity!!!"

Not Herve though...he has no discretion whatsoever when it comes to the food I give him. He nearly has an aneurysm when I open the can every morning.
"OhmyGod OhmyGod OhmyGod, what is it what is it what is it???? Oh my GOD! It's LAMB AND RICE!! AGAIN!!! That's the 487th time in a ROW! Holy shit, I am the luckiest dog EVER!!!" How can you not love that unfailing gratitude?

This is why people love dogs so much more than cats, or lemurs, or iguanas or hairless rats. It's because no matter how stupid you are, no matter what unbelievable act of idiocy you performed that day, you can go home, put a blanket over top of your dog and watch him go completely nuts.
"Oh my god!! Where am I??!?! What is going on??!! I need to roll around on the floor or something! I'm so screwed!!!"
And of course, nothing beats that warm fuzzy feeling you get when you finally take the blanket off your dog and he looks up at you with pure, beaming gratitude. "Oh thank GOD! I wasn't going to make it out of there! You are the best owner EVER! Sniffsniffsniffsniff."