Our new puppy, Hot Sauce, is turning out to be the incarnation of her given moniker. She is the spice. All day, every day, she calls the Marcy family patience plan into action. Before the dog, no such plan existed. What Mom liked to say is that our house was library quiet. Well, now we not only yell and clomp around with our shoes on and slam doors, we also have to arrange plans according to the Sauce princess. What would once have been a lazy saturday, perhaps visiting a real library, and enjoying a meal out somewhere or perhaps a picnic at the park, then a dvd at home with popcorn....that saturday is now gone. For, where, oh where, can the dog sit? That is right, she sits on us.
I have recently decided that the new rule is that we are not the royal Sauce's personal furniture. Seeing that is is our own over-indulgence which led the canine to assume anything on the floor is her personal chew-toy (including carpet, rugs, and the very floorboards) I must be firm in my re-directional education. Sure, sure, everybody wants a lapdog. And under any other circumstances, this would be most adorable. And she is small. Being part daschound and part something else, she is overlong for any of us to properly provide a lap. But it is cute sometimes, her funny piglet legs hang off of you, and if you carry her, it is like carrying a sack of potatoes, all uneven and lumpy.
Just try waking up every morning with an animal jumping onto your stomach, tiny claws, digging, digging, searching for that invisible thing which is really your arm under the mound of blankets. The dog is known to use its teeth in its incessant foraging. Yet so near, so very near, is the kitchen with the two silver bowls: one filled with crystal clear water, the other with delicious puppy kibble. Alas it seems the appetite of our canine is drifting toward softer foodstuffs, namely, our limbs. The proper response to having one's arm chomped is to cry out, as if in pain "OUCH!" It says so in all of the books. Well, I find it comforting to know this now, being as it is the natural human reaction. Simpatico. As if in pain, as if. Not hard to manage.
But back to the leisurely day, when the little pot belly is warm and full of crunchies and milk bones, she will undoubtedly wish to spend the Marcy family leisure activity with us. Being that we are in the second or third season of living without a television, you would think that our Marcy family plan to get off our lazy buts by throwing out the idiot box has prevailed. Oh, no, if I've never told you, you get to learn it now: the focus has instead shifted to a smaller, even more idiotic box: el computor. For upon it we can watch our dvds, and it is infact hooked up to the stereo for the booming volume our ears so pertinently have attuned to. And rather than enduring endless commercials, we endure endless buffering when watching shows online (like heroes and snl skits on nbc.com and greys anatomy on abc). And rather than flipping through channels, we flip through Youtube clips, under subjects for Ava such as : breakdancing kids, skateboarding kids, and perhaps best of all, old episodes of Small Wonder and Punky Brewster.
And as we sit upon the couch, in order of age, with inevitable crumbs dropping onto our flacid laps, and eyes glazed over in dumb acceptance at the silver and blue glare flashing from our mac screen, the dog must have her place. Only if she is sated from a day of roughhousing, troublemaking, chewing, biting, running and cavorting, she just might use one of us as her personal doggie bed. After the ritual thrice turn and turn again before she settles in.
I guess I just don't have the heart (or heartlessness?) to shove her away. She is, after all, part of the family. And though her tail is a tiny whip and her teeth miniscule daggers, her ears are so funny the way they stick straight out. She is one of those dogs which rarely 'smile'. Her habitual expression is one of either mischief or misery. The little frown is so funny on an obviously happy and excited dog. And she shows us her adoration by snuggling and gently gnawing on the nearest family member quietly, ever respectful of our flat screen habit.
