Love is Like Dog Food

His hair is so long you can't even see his eyes!  Poor little fuzzball!

About a week ago, my cousins saw a stray dog in the road narrowly avoiding a collision with a car.  The poor thing looked so dirty, and hungry, and lost that they just couldn’t bear to leave him alone in the street.  So they went out and approached the little guy.  He was a bit frightened at first, but didn’t run away or anything.  They managed to scoop him up and take him into the car.  By the time Brian and I came home that day, the dog was being housed in the garage with plenty of food and water.

The arrangement wasn’t to be permanent.  Lord knows my aunt doesn’t need another dog to look after.  She already has her little Chihuahua, Bambi, and Martin’s giant Labrador/Pit Bull mix, Athena, to look after.  And Athena is a handful.  In fact, the stray dog was in the garage simply because Athena wanted to eat him.

So no, the dog couldn’t just stay here.  They posted online somewhere that they had found a dog but couldn’t keep him, and that he was free for the taking.  We weren’t really sure of his exact breed (some kind of Poodle judging by his curly hair) or his age even.  He sort of padded around like an old man that first day, but his teeth are really pretty and white like a younger dog.  He sure is cute though, once you get past the dirty matted hair.

I’ve never really been much of a dog person truth be told.  I’ve never really been much of a cat person either.  Or a bird person, snake person, any kind of animal person.  It’s not that I hate animals.  I don’t.  I’ve just never really had any animals around me growing up, so I don’t feel particularly attached to them.  The closest thing I’ve ever really had to a pet was a goldfish named Sonny.  There were many Cher goldfishes that kept dying, but Sonny stayed the longest.  But other than that, my life has been largely pet-free.

I guess that isn’t true.  We got a crazy cat once that ran away after two days.  Its name was Bastian and it scratched everything so we were relieved when it escaped.  Later, when my dad was married to his second wife, they had dogs and a cat but I never played with them.  I just hoped the dogs wouldn’t jump on me on my way from the car to the house.  The cat was too fat too play with.  In high school our neighbors had a cat named Gracie that would often wander on over to our house.  She was cute, and I would pet her from time to time if she was ever on the couch next to me, but she wasn’t even ours.  I didn’t care about her that much.  Later on my family got a little dog named Freddy, but I was grown by that time.  I think he lives with my mom’s second husband now. 

At first I didn’t care much about that little dog in the garage.  When I heard there was a dog in there I peeked my head in out of mild curiosity, and my first impression was, “That’s an ugly little thing.  Looks like a dirty mop.”

But later that night Brian decided we should go into the garage and play with the dog because he was surely lonely.  It was hard for me to put my phone down.  One, I wasn’t that interested and two, I was trying to beat my level of Angry Birds.  But with great effort I tore myself away from the touch screen of my Droid and went into the garage with him.  The dog was in the corner opposite the door and when he saw us he came bounding our direction and put his little front paws up on my leg.  I crouched down to pet his curly head, and noticed for the first time his cute little face.  He was no longer a dingy ol’ mop, but an adorable doggy looking up at me.  And after a few moments with the three of us together in that garage, I knew I was in love with that mutt… and it wasn’t hard to tell that Brian had fallen for him too.

So far nobody has claimed him, and if nobody does, we are going to keep him.  We’ve named him Buster—after silent film star Buster Keaton—which is fitting because he’s a pretty silent dog.  Seriously, he like never barks.  He’s pretty calm (won’t even play “fetch”) but he loves to take walks.  He knows how to “sit” pretty well and he’s learning fairly quickly that he’s a good boy when he poops and pees outside, but a bad boy when he does it in the house.  Once we get some money we plan on taking him to a groomer and cleaning him up a bit.  He could really use a shampoo and a haircut.

Dogs are pretty simple, you know.  They love anybody who’ll feed them.  So as long as we keep the dog food coming, he knows that we love him.  And who knew that this “Chihuahua” needed some dog food lovin' as well?  I sure didn’t expect to fall in love with a dog!