The Things I Do for Puppy Love

  • Posted on
  • in

It's possible Steve and I take better care of our dog than we take care of ourselves. I think half the things we do out of genuine love and concern, and half because we were told we should do them and blindly obey them although in olden times people just used to leave their dogs in the back yard or basement or whatever and throw scraps down to them so I realize what we are. We are insane. From least to most crazy here are the things we do for our dog:

1.) Wipe his feet. This isn't that nuts really: it's springtime and it's muddy out and our dog seems to like pretending that he's putting his feet in cement at Graumann's Chinese theater. His feet are extremely huge and get big chunks of mud in them which he'd track all over the house if we didn't take care of them when we come in the house. What's weird is that we have a very special towel for this task that we got as a Christmas present and treated as one of the best things we'd ever been given. It's called "Soggy Paws" and it hangs on our coat rack perilously close to actual human coats.

2.) Dress him. Aside from hilarious outfits he wears a special greyhound coat when the weather's chilly. Again, I think looks more insane than it actually is. Greyhounds have very little body fat and you're supposed to keep them warm when it's cold.

3.) Drag his bed up to our room at night so he can sleep next to our bed. I think if we did not do this we could avoid his morning wakeup routine (lick bed, walk around, cry, honk his toy duck) but it wouldn't feel as companionable.

4.) Clean his ears. I only did this once or twice because I thought it was something you need to do but his ears aren't that dirty and swabbing someone else's ears isn't nearly as insane as doing it to yourself.

5.) Cook for him. We were informed that greyhounds have sensitive stomachs and need to eat special things. Now while I'm not so devoted that I give him the supplements I'm supposed to to keep his coat nice and shiny, in addition to his regular dog food he gets cooked white rice and boiled chicken breast. I hate making the chicken breast. Boiling chicken breast is one of the most unappealing smells in the world. But the rice is just instant rice because he's just a dog, for Christ's sake.

6.) Brush his teeth. We do this almost every night although there is sort of practical reason for this. When we got him his teeth were in yucky condition and his breath was rank so we decided to get his teeth professionally cleaned at the vet's, which is a big deal since they have to put the dog under anesthesia. The cleaning worked great but also set us back something like $400 and would have cost more if he had to get rotten teeth pulled so now we brush his teeth every night with peanut butter flavored toothpaste (although he prefers beef). To his credit the dog takes this pretty well, I think because he gets a treat for it, but on the dog-task scale of fun, it's only second to picking up poop, I'd say.

7.) Show his video to people. Our dog use to race. We have a DVD of it. We show it to interested parties. We pretend like we don't know the outcome of the races even though we totally do. (Hint: he wins).

8.) Blog about him. Because who cares, really? I'll tell you: I do.