Jolt Country

My wife is a normal human being who, like most other normal human beings, enjoys the company of animals.

I am a not-so-normal human being who had animals come and go when he was a kid. We lived outside town where people often dropped off unwanted animals. I had a lot of dogs as a kid that randomly wandered off. We didn't have a fence and none of our dogs had collars.

My wife wants our children to grow up as normal human beings and not be a psychopath like me, so that's why we have a cat. My wife had a dog growing up and loves dogs very much and wants us to have a dog. She brought a puppy home when Morgan was just crawling and both of them shit on the floor the same evening and the puppy went back to wherever it came from.

Morgan's 11 now and the whole lot of them have been trying to sell me on the idea of having a dog. I've said no a thousand times but they worn me down and I started saying "I don't care" and I guess they figured that's as close to a "yes" as they were going to get from me because now we have a dog.

The dog came from Pets and People, I think, and it's a mutt. For the past two weeks there have been dog visitation trips and dog walking trips. You have to build a "relationship" with the dog before it comes home. When I was a kid, we put dog food on the back porch and if the dog came back to eat, you had built a "relationship." Then we had to pay a bunch of fees and to have her spayed. And also we had to buy a bunch of dog toys because that's what dogs need, I guess.

It was so cold today that our town closed school. They were anticipating ice, but the ice never came. On a normal school day, I have to walk around and beat on the walls to wake everybody up. This morning at 5:53 a.m., the children were arguing over who was going to get to walk the dog first. It was 19 degrees outside. I believe the agreement was that one would get to hold the leash while the other walked along side the dog, and then they would change places. Throughout the day the dog went on roughly 48 walks.

Before Christmas, I told my daughter if she didn't clean her room, Santa wouldn't come. "He can leave my stuff in the hallway," she said. Today I told her if she didn't clean her room, she couldn't take the dog in there. She cleaned her room in 3.56 seconds. Suddenly I like the dog, and plan on using her to bribe everyone in this family into doing things. You can't watch television unless the dog has water. Need to use the bathroom? There had better be food in the dog's bowl, first!

The dog has developed a serious "hack." It sounds like when the cat is trying to barf up a furball. I'm fairly sure the dog is defective and that it won't make it through the night. It sounds like it has a bone stuck in its throat, except he hasn't had any bones, only expensive designer food for this mutt.

Last night both of the kids slept in the living room so that they could be "near" the dog. Tonight they have all returned to their rooms so it's just me and hacky here.

The dog didn't have a name so we had a naming session. I wanted to name her Vanessa or Janet because I think human names for dogs are hilarious. I forgot all of the kids' suggestions but we agreed on Molly. Morgan says she was named after the Unsinkable Molly Brown and I say it was for Molly Ringwald. My son says we named her after the drug. I asked him where he heard of Molly and he said "duh" and went to his room and slammed the door.

Flack wrote:My wife is a normal human being

We had a couple cats when I was a kid. Not sure how old, but it was before I truly came on-line. Memories are hazy, but then aren't they all.

Anyway, where I am going with this is that the second cat was this tiny little ball of fluff that we named Molly. This was the 80s. I didn't know that Molly was also the name of a drug, because I found that information out from your kid just now, two posts up.

I had a dog named Cosmo and I used to like to walk him on LSD. We'd named him before I became a Cosmonaut. That dog was a bad influence.

The dog got over its terrible cough, so its odds of living went up slightly before it chewed up one of my shoes. Then it went back down.

The dog currently does three things: "sit," "lay down," and "run away from me like I'm the guy who beat it before it went to the rescue shelter." The dog will trip over itself to allow the kids to pet her, but when it comes to me, I can't get her to come within 10', even with a jar of peanut butter.

The kids have not fought over who gets the walk the dog in at least a week now.

The greatest thing about owning a dog is now the cat pisses on everything, either because she's marking her territory, getting attention, or just reminding us all who runs the show. If she were a kid you could just say, "Hey, we're not getting rid of you. Quit pissing on stuff." But she's not, she's a cat, so when I say things that like she won't even look at me and I can tell all she's doing is waiting for me to leave the room to find something else to spray.

I want a dog but decided against it at the moment because we're thinking road trip in the summer and I don't know if we'd be able to find a dog sitter. I loved my dog growing up, but want to do a rescue this time around. BTW dog starts getting into particular things- sprinkle pepper all over one and leave it out. Might solve that issue. Humane ways to give a dog a consequence - pinch the ear or tap the snout.

In my house, we went the Listerine-filled-squirt-gun route. It honestly took like three squirts ever before all we needed to say was, "Squirt gun!" and the dog would stop whatever mischief he was into. Apparently, dogs hate fresh breath.

I will try the pepper and the mouthwash methods. Changing the WiFi password has been effective in curbing the childrens' behavior, but so far it hasn't worked on our four-legged guests.

The neighbors on both sides of our house have dogs. The neighbor on one side has two smaller dogs, and the neighbor on the other side has two pugs and a wiener dog. All of the dogs are indoor dogs, but when the neighbors let them out, and if they both let their dogs out at the same time, they bark at each other. Now when I hear them barking, I open the back door and let my dog go outside and bark, too. It's amazing how annoying it is when other people's dogs bark, and how amazingly satisfying knowing that mine might be annoying returning the favor in some small way.

Bark away, Molly Ringwald Brown Hatchet.