Uppity Dogs

By James L. Davis

We have a dumb dog.  She can’t help it I suppose, she was born that way, but there’s no denying that she is dumb.  My wife, of course, denies that the dog is dumb, but that’s because she is her dog and she says she’s cute.  Notice, I didn't say that my wife claimed her dog was smart, because to the best of my knowledge my wife has never claimed that her dog is smart.  When you call the dog dumb she says she is cute, which sounds to me an awful lot like changing the subject.

The dog is named Sage and she is an 8-year-old Shih tzu.  She is a purebred and as such she is not only dumb, but she’s a little uppity as well.  I get in trouble over Sage for a couple of reasons.  The first is because I call her dumb instead of cute and the second is because when I tell people what breed of dog she is I apparently emphasize the pronunciation of the first part of her breed name and under emphasize the second part.  If I do such a thing I’m quite sure it is purely coincidental.

I personally prefer a dumb dog over a smart one.  They’re a lot more fun to have around.  I don’t care at all for uppity dogs, however, and Sage’s tendency to feel a little superior can be annoying.  I blame it not only on her breeding but on my wife, who has convinced the dog that she is not a dog at all, but some beautifully hairy four-legged person.

Most mornings Sage gets a new bow put in her hair, either a pink, yellow or blue one.  I’m a little on the old fashioned side I suppose, but I don’t really understand the concept behind putting a bow in your dog’s hair, be it pink, yellow or blue, and I like blue.  But my wife thinks Sage needs a bow in her hair, so she gets one.

Now Sage is dumb, as I said before, but she’s not that dumb.  She knows that I think she doesn't need a bow in her hair.  She knows that I think she is in fact a dog, so she has a tendency to gloat a little bit when she is being treated more like a pampered child than a dog.

When my wife picks up the dog and talks to her like she is a newborn baby Sage will put her chin on my wife’s shoulder and look at me with those big brown eyes with barely concealed contempt.  She is spoiled, she knows she spoiled, she knows that I know that she is spoiled, and she knows that there’s not a thing I can do about it.

But in that she is wrong.  There is something I can do about it, just not the thing I would like most to do about it, which is take the bow out of her hair and put her in a dog house instead of a doggie bed more comfortable than my recliner (don’t ask me how I know, I just do).

What I can do about it is use the laser light. My daughter unintentionally showed me the joys of a laser light some time ago.  She brought a laser pointer home and, after carefully reading the instructions on where not to point it, immediately started trying to blind me with it.  So I did what any good father would do, I took the laser away from her and tried to find some devious way to use the laser in a manner not intended.

Which is when Sage came prancing in the room, having just had a new bow put in her hair and told how beautiful she was by my wife.  I looked at the dog and I looked at the laser and  I tried to figure out a way that I could use the laser on the dog.  I couldn't think of anything, which is when I turned it on and the red dot of the laser shined on the floor next to Sage.  Sage saw the light and her ears suddenly pointed up.  I gave the laser light a little wiggle and Sage suddenly went into convulsions on the linoleum floor, desperately trying to catch the laser light between her teeth and failing completely to do so.  I turned off the laser.

I looked at my daughter and my daughter looked at me and Sage looked at us both as if to say, “What was that thing and where did it go?”

We turned the laser back on and let it skip across the floor and Sage pounced after it.  We shined it on the wall and Sage would suddenly become a spring, bouncing off the floor in an attempt to get to the laser.  The laser suddenly became a highly valuable and sought after device.

The absolute greatest thing about the laser was that when Sage was following the laser she paid attention to absolutely nothing else, which made for some interesting collisions into walls, the living room couch and the children’s grandpa as Sage chased the little red light.

After 20 minutes of chasing the light the bow had drooped down the side of the little dogs face.  She was panting but she was smiling because she knew that she would catch that light if we gave her another chance.

Suddenly Sage was no longer an uppity dog.  She was just a dog and a dumb dog at that.  Which makes for a pretty good dog.