While I've said for years that I'd never want to have a Bulldog because of the various problems they suffer from human interference in their DNA, I must say that I've become the bulldog lady at Dog Tired - we have half a dozen or so, each very different from each other, and I'm besotted with all of them for various reasons.
Louise is my favorite of all the dogs at Dog Tired, but don't tell my 20 other favorites that I said that. She's moody, affectionate, complaining, hard-charging, playful, stubborn, and (maybe this is the simpatico part for me) is SOOO effin cranky when she's tired. She's a monster and I just love her to death even when she's raining brimstone on other dogs for daring to approach me. I love talking to her from across the room when she's asleep on her feet and so very wishing that she was home in her own bed. She'll look at me knowing that I understand that in her heart she'd rush across the room to be with me if she could just pull her butt off the couch. Her exploits at home are a delight to hear about too - like when she called in sick the day after Halloween because managing the trick-or-treaters had just been Too Much. It's Lou's world and we're just living in it.Okay, it has to be said right here that one of the reasons the bulldogs like me is that several of them know that Peg will help a brother out when there's a delicate matter that needs attending to. Since most bulldogs are genetically engineered such that they can no longer reach their own asses, hygiene can be a challenge, and they've each figured out their own way of asking me to give them some personal assistance.
Miles is quickly becoming another favorite of mine mainly because of his sad affection for the toybox. We don't have toys in the playrooms on Miles days because he's So Not Into Sharing, though sometimes he'll play alone with a big plastic ball out in the hallway between classrooms - heaving and snorting and really being far too engaged, while trails of slime are rolled from wall to wall and back again. He quickly learned how to take the tops off the toyboxes and climb right in, so now they're kept up on kennels. Miles will sit nearby, or underneath, and pine with a mournful squall - something like the sound your camel makes when you squeeze it too hard.
But eventually the vigil becomes tiring, and like Louise, Miles goes to sleep on his feet, and finally fades away to dreamland, where all the toys belong to him.
1 comment:
Thank you for this reminder of one of my all-time favorite dogs - a bulldog named Tank, who belonged to my handler's mother and HATED everyone, which was expressed with a lordly contempt that was seering in its impact. Doggie Disdain that needed to be seen to be appreciated. But he loved me, and his love was expressed with a total lack of dignity, a fair share of slime, and always resulted in me getting a rash on my face from the resulting whisker burn. There is NOTHING in the world like a Bulldog.
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