This is Shane when he was first taken in by the Little Shelter in Huntington, NY. I hadn't met him yet, but I had seen him moping around the Shelter and had no idea we would be spending our post-shelter lives together. You can see how cute he was, but you can also see that he wasn't exactly the happiest puppy on the block. No one would adopt him for another four months because he always nipped at anyone who touched his collar. Something bad must have happened to his neck area, because he still doesn't let anyone but Joan mess with his neck. They're really wonderful, well-meaning humans at the Little Shelter, although I think they didn't have high hopes for me or for Shane, because when we were there, they sent us to confer with a dog psychologist, claiming we didn't know how to play.
Big deal. Life isn't all play, you know. And, if we wanted to, we could play just as well as the next dog. For example, this morning, Shane played "sniff the dead mouse," and I'm not talking about any phony plastic mouse. No way. He had the real thing. It's played just the way it sounds. First you find a dead mouse, then you sniff it and run around it three times; next, you lie down and put your snout about a millimeter away from its open mouth—if you touch it, you're out. Finally, you sniff it again, get up, and run in a circle. It's great for paw-eye coordination and for working out those hard-to-reach quads.
The first time we spotted a dead mouse, about six months ago, Joan said, all weepy, "Oh, the poor little thing" and carried it into the woods across the street so it could return to nature. Since that time, we've found about five more dead mice. Now, she curses and scoops them into the garbage with the poop rake. So much for enduring sensitivity.
It's a little strange that if she finds one little fly in the house, she catches it and brings it outside in a clean napkin-covered glass. But, god forbid there should be twelve of them, because then she'll take out the yellow vacuum cleaner and suck their little bug bodies into the black tube of death where the laws of physics are turned inside out. "Who wants to be a fly anyway?" That's how she rationalizes. When the flies begin to swarm, everyone's a philosopher.
Big deal. Life isn't all play, you know. And, if we wanted to, we could play just as well as the next dog. For example, this morning, Shane played "sniff the dead mouse," and I'm not talking about any phony plastic mouse. No way. He had the real thing. It's played just the way it sounds. First you find a dead mouse, then you sniff it and run around it three times; next, you lie down and put your snout about a millimeter away from its open mouth—if you touch it, you're out. Finally, you sniff it again, get up, and run in a circle. It's great for paw-eye coordination and for working out those hard-to-reach quads.
The first time we spotted a dead mouse, about six months ago, Joan said, all weepy, "Oh, the poor little thing" and carried it into the woods across the street so it could return to nature. Since that time, we've found about five more dead mice. Now, she curses and scoops them into the garbage with the poop rake. So much for enduring sensitivity.
It's a little strange that if she finds one little fly in the house, she catches it and brings it outside in a clean napkin-covered glass. But, god forbid there should be twelve of them, because then she'll take out the yellow vacuum cleaner and suck their little bug bodies into the black tube of death where the laws of physics are turned inside out. "Who wants to be a fly anyway?" That's how she rationalizes. When the flies begin to swarm, everyone's a philosopher.
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