Like Waterboarding, Except For A Dog.
I’m a “dog” guy. I like dogs. Not small kickdogs that just kind of sit there and bark and are decidedly anti-fetching, though some of those are nice and occasionally have “personality.” Most of them are annoying, if only because they’ve devolved into an accessory.
Nope. I like dogs. A boxer. A golden retriever. A Labrador. Those are dogs. Some dogs are a little too much dog for me: St. Bernards, Dobermans, Great Danes, etc (N.B. Whenever I hear of Great Danes, I’m reminded of what someone once told me a long time ago: “Bad hearts. Huge shits.”). We used to have Kommondors - we had three, actually: Harpo, Julie, Simon - which is a dog you might recognize from the cover of Beck’s Odelay. Now: there’s a dog. And we had it in Las Vegas. There was a tough motherfuckin’ dog. Sweet as can be, but mangled a few cats and an “exotic” bird that got in our backyard. Hey, you gotta protect the family, you know? Besides which: THEY’RE JUST CATS.
ANYWAY. I get to see my dogs this weekend. All six (six?) of them. They’re a decent if not temperamental group. A few kickdogs in there. They all follow Helen around like they’re the fuckin’ Outsiders or something, and anyone who rings our doorbell is a pack of Socs*. Goddamn, those dogs go apeshit when someone rings the doorbell. It’s insane. You could shoot holes through our walls with a .22, and they might look up. But someone rings the doorbell, and all six of ‘em will freak the fuck out.
Don’t get me wrong. I like my dogs. Especially Hannah. She’s the lab. I do not mind a good game of fetch with her around the front yard. She has done nothing to hurt me (though she did take one of the Shitzu’s eyes out in a particularly brutal fight; now Barton - Coen Bros, anyone? - has one eye and my dad couldn’t stop calling Hannah “The Bride” for a few weeks, to Helen’s intense dismay). I particularly like, miss, and look forward to seeing this dog.
Which is why I would never - never, not in a million fucking years - buy this for her. She loves her toys. Loves them. Has a strong, sentimental affection for them. What kind of cruel psychopath would freeze them in a block of ice? I don’t care how goddamn hot it is outside! Don’t do that to my dog. If you froze something I loved in a block of ice, I would flip out. I can’t even begin to process what she would go through the first time she saw that..
“WHATTHEFUCKWHYAREMYTOYSINTHISREALLYCOLD
THINGIDON’TGETITPLEASEPLEASPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE
COMEOUTCOMEOUT
IWANTMYTOYYYYYYYYYYYYSSSSSSSSSSS!
OWTHISISCOLDFUCKYOUUNIVERSE!”
*Pronounced “Soh-sh”, for all you assholes who never read S.E. Hinton.