“”Going to the Dogs”

Saturday is cleaning day at our house, which means I do everything possible to be somewhere else on this day.  Saturdays are excellent for outdoor projects of many kinds, bush hogging pasture, mowing grass, or just generally planning for the next Saturday’s project.  It took me almost two hours this afternoon of sound napping to come up with a project for next Saturday, due to the mental strain I incurred thinking about it.  I heard a vacuum going somewhere in the distance, but I never fully woke to investigate.

This brings me now to the subject of the hour.  I heard my wife remark early this morning as we left with the tractor to bush hog a friend’s horse pasture, “This house is going to the dogs!”  Now since I am not a dog for the immediate future, as far as I know, and today I have not been consigned to the DOG HOUSE,  I assume my wife is referring to the three dogs who live in our house on a daily basis from 7pm to 9pm.  At 9pm, they finally go into their crates for their overnight, and this is when the cats and I emerge to re-enter the den.  During the period from 7pm to 9pm each evening I retreat to my only sanctuary in the home, which is my office.

I am sitting in my office now eating my watermelon chunks, which is my dessert after my evening meal of a tomato sandwich.  Tomato sandwiches with Duke’s mayonnaise on white bread are a staple across the whole South this time of the year, on hot summer’s eves.  The other necessary item on a hot summer evening is a cool watermelon.  Now, one might ask, “Why am I eating my watermelon in my office?”  There is a good reason.  My daughter’s Great Dane puppy, who is now 100lbs, has a good sniffer.  So whenever I sit down to eat a tomato sandwich, he shows up behind me trying to root himself in to eat my sandwich.  Since his head is now as high as our dining room table, it takes a lot of dexterity to eat my tomato sandwich before he figures out how to get a bite for himself.

I found out the other night he likes watermelon, too.  I was sitting at the table with my back to the Great Dane (named “Finn”) after his Scottish relatives, or perhaps these are mine, I forget.  In any case, I was leaning back in the chair taking one chunk of watermelon at a time and enjoying the juice squirting out from all sides in my mouth, savoring the rich flavor and succulence of it all, when to my surprise a face appeared from under my right arm with his tongue out going for my watermelon bowl.  I only rescued my bowl by standing up quickly, as I still have a couple feet of height more than the dog.  He looked at me with sad eyes but I refused to feed him my watermelon.

I inquired of my daughter.  “Daughter,” I said, “why is this dog wanting my watermelon?”  “Oh Daddy, it is simply because he likes watermelon, so I feed him some every day!”

So there you have it.  I sit at night, no longer at the table, nor in front of the TV on my favorite corner of the couch with its recliner.  No, instead, I hide in my office, secretly and silently eating my watermelon.  A man should have a right to eat watermelon when he wants to in his own home.  But I have been displaced from the TV room and from the dining room.  The only safe place to eat watermelon is in my office.

Now you may ask, “Why do you not simply put the Great Dane outdoors?”  Well, this is my daughter’s dog, which I somehow purchased for her, but I don’t recall why.  She is studying to go to Vet School, and so she brings Finn in every night to sit with her while she watches the “Great Doctor Pol,” who is a TV veterinarian.  Apparently, to go to Vet School, an applicant is required to watch at least 500 TV hours of instruction by Dr. Pol.  I have seen so many calves being pulled I could do it myself in the dark with my eyes closed.   I can no longer watch the program at all.

So when Dr. Pol is on and the three dogs (yes three!) are all in the den watching “The Great Dr. Pol” with my daughter and wife, I retreat to my office for an evening of gentle contemplation.  Eating watermelon hydrates and lubricates my brain enough to give me another hour of alertness after work, so whatever is done goes quite smoothly as long as I can escape the dogs.

My cat, Umlaut, a grey short hair who snores, often accompanies me in my retreat and rubs my legs until I give him his evening rubdown.  We have another cat too, an orange Himalayan, but he hides “in the high places” sleeping until the dogs are put to bed.  I see him at night roaming around checking on things.  His excitement is chasing a piece of ice which ejects itself from the fridge when we fill our cups. Riley can chase ice for hours, or until it melts on the floor.

Petunia, our brown Boykin spaniel and Buddy, the tri-colored Corgi make up the rest of this menagerie.  I like the Corgi.  He is a sensible, suitable dog.  The jury is still out on the other two in my mind.  During the two hours they are in the den, Finn picks up a toy while Petunia tries to take it away from him. If the toy is a long slender toy, they pull back and forth trying to extract it from the other dog’s mouth.  I hear tell, but I did not see it, the long legged monkey toy was shredded in this way.  Petunia apparently likes the stuffing inside the toys more than the toy itself.  I think the dinosaur and the rabbit toy were also shredded in this way.

The other night walking across the den, I stepped on one toy and almost wrenched my foot.  So now at night I kick all the dog toys into the corner of the room before I attempt to walk across the den floor.  It is much safer that way.

Indeed, our house is “going to the dogs.”  Everyone got a bath today, I have been informed, so they all smell very nice.  My daughter scrubbed the floor of every downstairs room this afternoon and informed me: “Your office is the least dirty of any room!”  I was happy to hear about that.  At least there is one room in the home which is not “going to the dogs!”  It may have stacks of paper, envelopes, books and old letters, but by God there is no dog in here!  Since the cat cares not the least for my watermelon, I can eat without feeling any guilt for his nutritional health.

I am sure Finn must like watermelon for the same reason I do, for the burst of juicy flavor hitting all parts of the mouth at one time and the swell of fructose sugar for the brain.  However, I am not sharing my watermelon with Finn.  Otherwise, he might think this is his main food!  A man can afford only so many watermelons in one week.  He is so big, I bet he would eat the whole thing at once and leave me none at all!  I grew up in a large family, which forced me to hide my Pepsi-Colas from by two brothers, who found them more often than I care to admit.  While I could never outwit my brothers, I think I have a fighting chance with the dog.

A word of advice from one who has been there:  “Don’t feet watermelon to your dog!”  Keep it all for yourself.  Let the dog have the dog bones, the dog toys and the bacon chews made for the dog.  Keep the watermelon for the people.  There has to be a few things which separate us from our animals.  Otherwise, your home will be like mine.  It will be GOING TO THE DOGS!