Category Archives: family dog

Scientifical Dog-Poop Theories

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I have been taking note of the Republican approach to science as displayed repeatedly in Congress.  I decided that this is the kind of science that can best explain the dog-poop phenomena, since it is, ultimately, about how the data feels more than measuring and quantifying and dealing with, you know, those fact thingies.

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You see, the problem comes in with the fact that my dog, Jade, is producing dog poop at record levels, and it is all becoming rather a burden.   Now the dog-poop literature, (yes it does exist, since dog lovers write about anything and everything to do with dogs), says that it is not uncommon for a healthy young dog to poop as much as 5 times a day.  But my dog seems to poop exactly one time more per day than the number of times you take her for a walk.  If we go out five times, she poops six.  If I take her out in the middle of the night for a sixth time, she poops seven.  What the heck?

My wife really hates the dog because she poops on the carpet so much.  (The dog, not my wife.  My wife is satisfactorily house-broken.)  There are places on the living room carpet she marked as a puppy five years ago where she insists on re-pooping practically every night.  No matter how often we scrub the carpet and box her ears, still, brown spots and poop lumps to greet us almost every morning.  Maybe she does it because my wife tells her how much she hates her and the dog wants to get even.  But that is the opposite of what the dog says.  She loves Mommy because Mommy gives the dog soup bones.  Somehow, it seems the dog believes she is giving us all a gift by pooping on the carpet and filling the house with her personal scent.  She poops for us because she loves us.

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Here Jade Beyer is busy using Henry’s computer. She has her own Facebook page and everything.

I drew the diagram at the start of this article to better explain my Republicanized theories of dog poop and dog love.  You will notice that, based on observations of total output, I have theorized that dogs must be almost completely hollow.  They don’t apparently store poop in their legs, but the rest of their dog bodies appear to be hollow poop-tubes that store nearly infinite amounts of poo.  Dogs also apparently have some kind of instant-poop-maker at the base of the throat so that anything they eat, dog food, my missing left socks, my son’s retainer, dead rats, whatever was growing behind the rice bag in the pantry, and whatever people food they can steal, is instantly transformed into poop.  Need to poop on the floor because dad didn’t give you any of the bacon at breakfast?  Eat a sock.  Fill up with instant poop ammo.  The poop on the floor will prove how much you love dad and why he should give you bacon more.

So, now that I have studied the poop problem, what solutions could there be?

Well, I have threatened the dog to use corks and other sorts of plugs, but that wouldn’t solve the problem so much as merely delay it.  And I dread the impending explosion in the living room that such a plan suggests to a vivid imagination like mine.  I have thought about feeding her less, but it seems she can still use the puppy beg-eye to such good effect that she could subsist entirely on people food conned out of my son and daughter.  So, I will use a Republican congressional solution.  Since their response to poverty is to give more money to rich people, and the solution to climate change is to cut pollution restrictions, then obviously I need to feed my dog MORE!  I need to cram it down her greedy little throat if necessary.  That will fix it.  Or bring about fat, exploding dogs all the sooner.

 

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Filed under family dog, feeling sorry for myself, goofiness, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney

Spokes-Dog

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At breakfast I cooked smokies, small-sized fried sausages.  Jade, our family dog got up to the table with the rest of us.

“I can eat twenty of those!” Jade said.

“No you can’t,” I said.  “You are a dog and eat from a bowl on the floor.  I didn’t even set a plate on the table for you.  This is not dog food.”

“Dad?  Did you see these coupons for Taco Bell on the table?” said the Princess.

“Oh, you mean, the Taco Bueno ads?  Remember what the last trip to that other place gave us?”

“Oh, yeah.  That was a horrible day spent in the bathroom,” she answered.

“The next time you go to Taco Bell, take me! ” said the dog.  “I loved the taco meat I found on the table last time you made the mistake of leaving some there.”

“Well, I do know that Taco Bell is universally loved by dogs.”

“How do you know that?” asked the Princess.

“Don’t you remember the Taco Bell dog?  Or were you too young when he was popular?”

“I think I was too young.”

“Look him up on the internet.”

“Oh, yeah!  I kinda remember that.  He was a talking dog, just like Jade.”

“Yes, but I think he mostly spoke Spanish.”

“He’s handsome!” said Jade.  “But look, he’s on television with very short fur… he’s naked!  That would be very embarrassing.”

“Yeah, when it comes to TV spokes-dogs, you’d probably prefer Spuds Mackenzie.  He had more style.”

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“I never heard of him,” said the Princess.

“Well, he was before you were born.  He was the Budweiser spokes-dog.”

“Did he talk too?”

“Just party language.  He was always chilling by the pool with beautiful human girls.”

“Let me see more of him!” demanded Jade.

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“Wow!” said Jade.  “A dog who drinks beer and plays guitar!  I think I’m in love!”

“That was so long ago, though,” I said.  “He is probably dead by now.  The average life span of a dog is only about ten years at the most.”

“Oh, now I am depressed,” said Jade.  “And you know the only cure for that is to give me some of the breakfast sausages!”

So, as I gave a dog a sausage, I was deeply regretting the whole talking dog thing.

 

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The Dog is in the Doghouse

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My name is Jade Beyer, and I’m the loyal, lovable family dog (at least, I hope I still am).  I am writing today’s post because Dad is mad at me.  And I should point out that it takes a lot of effort for me write Dad’s post for him.  I can’t really type with my paws because I hit lots of letters all at once when I do that.  I found a way, however, to roll up my tongue and punch a single letter at a time.  And the dog slobber  only makes the computer spark and fritz a little bit more than usual.  So he should really appreciate me for going to all that effort.

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You see, yesterday, after lunch was over, I got up on the table to look for left-over people food.   Eating enough people food turns you into a people, as I’m sure you already knew.  Really, it’s true!  Otherwise, how could a family dog like me learn to read and write so good?  Anyway, while looking for people food, I found a clear plastic thing in the shape of Henry’s teeth next to his empty plate.  It smelled like Henry.  And I love Henry.  So, I chewed on the thing that smelled just like Henry because I love him.  How was I supposed to know that a new retainer costs $350?  People pay ridiculous amounts of money for stuff that Henry just puts in his own mouth anyway.  It doesn’t justify my family re-telling that awful story about when Uncle Maligaya was a boy in the Philippines and he let his friends talk him into cooking and eating the family dog.  I really don’t like that story.

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A portrait of me as the people I’m meant to be

And this morning, Dad got back from driving the Princess to her new school all grumpy because of traffic and stupid Texas drivers who don’t know how to signal for a lane change but definitely know how to cut you off in the drop-off lane.  I offered to drive for him.  But he’s still mad at me.  And he reminded me that the last time I drove the car, I accidentally ran over three cats.  (I told him the reason for that is because I have no thumbs and can’t hold the steering wheel properly.  But that might not be entirely true.  Mr. Tinkles is evil and deserved to die.)  So, we settled on me writing his post for today so he could have time to call the orthodontist and make an appointment to get a new retainer made.  And if it doesn’t turn out to be any good as a piece of literature, well, it’s because I am dog, and apparently not a very good  dog.  (I’m really not clear on what “I’m going to make dog burgers out of that @#$%&! dog!” actually means.)

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Filed under family, family dog, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Clean Gene the Cleaning Genii Rides Again

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I had a magic soda bottle that I could rub and out popped a genii who helped me clean the house.  Now that my wife has returned to the Philippines for family reasons, I have apparently lost the bottle.  So far, digging through piles of junk in the library and my bedroom have only resulted in more mess.  I could’ve sworn I left it under the bed.   Part of the problem with cleaning in the library is the fact that I can’t pick up stuff for more than ten minutes before finding a book I have to look at or re-read, or put on my re-re-read pile.

Jade girl

Part of the problem that leads to the need for a genii to clean is the responsibility of the family dog.    And she doesn’t do her share of the housework.   Jade the dog seriously believes that she can be a people if she eats enough people food.  So she steals from the pantry when my kids invariably leave the pantry door open.  She will pull out the Pringles cans, the half-eaten bags of chips, the powdered chocolate milk packets, and all sorts of other packages to dismember and shred behind the sofa and overstuffed chairs in the living room.  And no matter how many times I lecture her about it, she never picks that trash up.  She just sulks like a teenage girl, hating me for my fuddy-duddy old dinosaur brain.  But I occasionally have to remind her that people, the group she so desperately wants to be a part of, don’t pee on the living room rug when they are impatient to go out.

So, I am just guessing here, but I think the time has come to stop searching for magic bottles and just roll up my sleeves and do it myself.  Time to pick up the trash.  Vacuum the floor with the aging vacuum… a device that does not work well at all, but ironically doesn’t suck… and then shampoo the carpet with dog-stain remover.  I need to reorganize book shelves, dust behind TV’s, some of which no longer work, pick up and do laundry, actually wash the dishes in the sink before putting them in the dishwasher to do to them whatever mysterious cleaning magic a dishwasher actually does… (Have you ever noticed that if you don’t pre-wash dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, they don’t get clean?  What does this machine actually do?)  Anyway, the only workable solution is to actually clean the house.  Children and dogs who want to be people help in small ways, mostly by cheering you on and supportive comments and eating stuff you find behind the couch… and the dog helps with that last part.

Since today is a hot summer Saturday, too hot to do neglected yard work (a whole ‘nother post it seems) I will start today.  And I suspect that Clean Gene the Cleaning Genii is off visiting his cousin, the guy pictured on bottles of Mr. Clean, in Cleveland so that he can see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame now that they have finally enshrined Steve Miller even though Mr. Miller never really wanted to be.

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Dog Thoughts

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Now that she regularly steals people food from the pantry, Jade the dog is becoming more and more like the human race she wants to be a member of.  Recently she was reading my blog and got the idea that she could write poetry.  So, I was searching for an idea for today’s post and decided I would let her give it a try.  So all of this poetry today will be written by the family dog.

 Introducing Dog Thoughts 

Woof!  Grumph-hak-borph-borph… Rrrr.

Did you get that?  Or do I have to translate everything into your language?

Boofa-Rrrrr.  Bork bork grumph…. okay, we’ll do it your way.

But every time I need to add a tail wag,

Ima gonna go “*************” where each “*” is one wag.

Got it now?  People are so dumb!

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The family dog after eating enough potato chips to become all people-y…

It Is a Stinky World!

Ooowow!  I go outside and I can smell dog poop in the park!

The rabbit that lives in the hedge leaves those little round brown things!

I want to put my nose in a pile of those *********!

I like to eat cat droppings, but you have to dig them up *******

And I am deathly afraid of the white cat… it kills and eats rats!

And it’s almost as big as I am

With breath that smells like dead rats

It is a stinky world! *******

Isn’t that great! ********

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Queen of the Couch

Why do you not understand

That the couch is mine all morning and all afternoon?

I will get off when it’s time to eat

And I will get off when it’s time to go outside

But the rest of the time the couch is mine

So don’t disturb me

Or I’ll pee in your shoes!

Dingledum dog.

Rats Are NOT Our Friends

I smell them more than see them

With rank and nasty sewer smells

And I never, ever catch them

They don’t come ringing bells

And my master puts out poison

Which they eat with garbage sauce

But it only makes them poison-proof

And I am at a loss…

All I do is bark at them

When I smell them in the walls

And my family’s mad at ME

When all the blame and curses fall.

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The Beg-Eye

Do you really not see me here? *****

Here right by your knee? ******

I know you’re eating bacon!  *******

I can smell every bite disappearing! ********

Look into my eyes!  *********

My big, sad dog eyes! **********

Don’t you want to give me some? **********

I  mean, it’s BACON!  ************

**************************************!!!

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I Do Love My Family

I take my beloved family members for walks

Four or five times a day

It keeps them healthy

With cold, wet noses

And shiny coats of fur

And I always make sure they are on the other end of the leash

How else can I guide them, and keep them safe?

From passing cars?

And other dogs?

But I wish they would be patient

when I stop to sniff all the tree trunks and posts

Where I check the messages  from boy dogs

Written in pee

Some of them sure do have healthy bladders!

 

 

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Filed under autobiography, family dog, humor, Paffooney cartoony, poetry

The Ghost Dog

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Before I begin this very confusing and confusticating tale, I need to start by stating clearly that I do not believe in ghosts.  I am firmly convinced that there is a rational scientific explanation for everything, and those things we may be tempted to see as a spirit living on after death of the body are really only misperceptions of other things… and wishful thinking.

In spite of all that, we have a ghost dog living in our house.

I know that contradicts everything I just said, but human beings are like that.  Practically everything about this life is shot full of contradictions and impossibilities.  So, let me lay out those contradictions as I encountered them.

This house we live in now was built in the 1970’s.  It was lived in by a middle-class white family.  A woman showed up here ten years ago wanting to look at the house because she grew up in it, and it had been sold when her parents died.  So this house is not young enough to be free of potential spirits of those who lived before.  But no tragic deaths, the kind that the lore says cause ghosts to walk, happened in this house.  Except for the possibility of a family pet hit by a car in this neighborhood.

The first time I saw it was when I got out of the bathtub one evening in early January.  As I opened the door to the bathroom, still not having my glasses on, I saw a dog sitting in the upstairs hallway, panting with its tongue hanging out.  Now, we do have a dog, but our dog, Jade, is a small yellow-and-white dog.  The dog I glimpsed out of the corner of my near-sighted, astigmatic eye with no corrective lens in front of it was a rather large chocolate brown dog.  I jumped a bit and looked directly at it.  It was no longer there with a speed that gave the lie to the notion that it was a real dog.  It had to be a trick of the eye and the goofy old brain.  Our mind is wired in a way that makes sense out of every visual stimulus-blob  in the best way that it can.  I must have misinterpreted some shadow or blob of color in a way that my brain instantly converted into a chocolate-brown Labrador-retriever sort of dog… with a goofy, open-mouthed dog-smile.

So, I didn’t really think anything more about it.  I investigate ghost stories and conspiracy theories all the time as a part of the kind of surrealist writing I like to do.  I always find those wedges of doubt that smugly allow me to dismiss the Don Knotts’ Mr. Chicken response.

Then, I saw it again.  I have to get up in the night to go to the bathroom at least three times every night.  About a week ago, I was making one of these necessary nocturnal treks when I happened to look down the staircase in passing.  I saw the tail end of a big chocolate-colored dog trotting past on the way towards the garage.  My heart leaped.  And then I reminded myself we have a dog and she lives on a very different schedule than we do.  I went to the bathroom, and then went down the stairs to investigate.  The family room door was shut and blocked with a clothes-hamper.  We have been trying to keep the dog out of the family room because she has a bad habit of trying to pee on the family room carpet in the middle of the night to mark her territory.  There are certain discolored spots on the rug that we have worked very hard to keep dry.  And I found our dog asleep on the foot of my son’s bed where she always sleeps.  Whatever I saw wasn’t her.  But again, I didn’t have my glasses on.  I began mulling over the possibility of this post at that point.

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Last night made this post a necessity.  While returning from my nocturnal pee-break after midnight, I distinctly heard a dog whimpering, coming from the landing of the stairs.  I stepped into the landing, and I still heard it.  If it was not a dream sound or a misinterpretation of my own stomach growling, then I was hearing an invisible dog whimpering.  It didn’t last for more than a minute.  Again, the dog herself was nowhere near the place.

Should I be scared?  Of course not.  Ghosts don’t exist, do they?  And even if this one does exist somehow, it was a beloved family pet, more likely to protect us than hurt us.  So I was able to get back to sleep easily.  But this post became absolutely necessary.  If you read in the newspapers that a family in Carrollton, Texas was eaten by wolves in the middle of the night some night… tell somebody about my unfounded suspicions.

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Dog Writes

Jade Monster1Okay, like, my name is Jade Beyer.   I know I look like a dog, but my family lets me be a people sometimes.  They let me eat enough people food from their table to turn into one of them.  You know, like, all fat and unhealthy and some stuff.  So, since Mickey is being lazy today, he said I could write his blog for him.   It won’t be very long because it is taking forever to pick out the right keys with my nose.  And my nose is bif… I mean big enough to hit the wrong key sometimes.  So I have to edif caretully and ofren.

My family does a lot of funny stuff I can tell about.  Like how they pee.  They go in my extra drinking places.  You know, the white things with the extra funky tasting water.  Why are you not laughing about that?  Don’t you get it?  The house is full of carpets where they could pee and mark their territory with their scents.  But they would rather just pee where I drink.  I don’t get it.  And why is Mickey yelling at me that I can’t write about that?  I just did, didn’t I?

But besides that I can tell you about my Momma.  Mickey is my Momma.  Why do I say that even though Mickey is a man?  Well, when I was a wee little puppy and my family found me in the street, Mickey was the first one to pick me up and hold me.  He was the first one to feed me.  He says I must have “imprinted” on him as baby animals sometimes do.  And that’s why he’s my Momma.  I love him best.  Even when he is grumpy and mad at me.  I chew up a lot of his stuff because it smells like him and I love him so very much.

I am writing this today because Mickey is busy shaving off his face fur.  He found some old pictures of himself for yesterday’s post, and it made him wonder if he could look anything like that again.  I tried to chew the old pictures so I could love them even better, but he just got mad at me and swatted me on the ears.  He said I could show you the old pictures, and not eat them.  So here they are before the temptation gets to me;

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Wasn’t he a goofy-looking kid?  I like him better with glasses.  I tasted his glasses once, but not the ones in the picture, the ones he is wearing now.  His face doesn’t look anything like the third grade pictures any more.  I would very much like to lick that little-boy face with the same tongue I use to lick my own butt, but Mickey says he’s glad I can’t because that kid was dumb enough to let a dog lick his face.  Apparently when people get older, you just can’t lick them as much.  It just makes them grumpy.

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