My Dogs are Dumb.

As if there isn't enough chaos in my life with two little kids, I am also the proud father of two dogs. Now, I love my dogs very much, they are great companions for the kids and for my wife and I, but I am sad to report that they are also some of the dumbest dogs in the world, and for those of who think the phrase "dumbest dogs" is redundant, I agree. Dogs are pretty dumb. Let me give you some examples.

Jasper is a 10 year old brown mutt. Amy got him after she graduated college and while I was still in college so she could have a companion while I was out fiddling around and drinking too much in the South Dakota prairie. Jasper was an orphan found roaming the streets of Duluth as a very young puppy. There were signs that clearly pointed to abuse in his former home. He also had kennel cough and dog pneumonia and he sneezed big green snotballs all over his paws every 5 minutes or so. Naturally Amy felt bad for him and bought him, and spent the next 2 months completely immersed in dog boogers. As we've found out, buying a formerly abused dog means that Jasper is really weird sometimes, which makes him prone to doing really dumb things like,

-Hiding under the bed for 36 straight hours because he got scared because I fell down the stairs, ass first, and yelled loudly because I landed on the hard pokey part of an extension cord.

-Being scared of flies- I think a fly must have bit him on the snout once, because every time he sees a fly he goes and hides under things and squeeks loudly, until I tell him to shut up or I will throw him in the dryer and turn it on.

-Barks ferociously in the pitch-ass dark middle of the night at nothing, which causes me to get worried that there are a pack of zombies surreptitiously sneaking into my house to decapitate me and eat my brains.

-Eats cat turds and then tries to come lovingly lick my face including the inside of my mouth.

-Barks for hours at Box Elder bugs that congregate on the west side of my house. Westside bitches.

-Sneaks away from me and runs aimlessly throughout the neighborhood and almost gets hit by cars in the process.

-Tears apart the garbage and drags it throughout the house including underneath small hidey-holes that are not easily accessible by people.

-Barfs in the corner all over the baseboards.

-Sneezes right in my face while I'm petting his belly.

So, because I'm an idiot who doesn't understand anything, I thought that Jasper would benefit from having a friend in the house to keep him company when we were at work, and that this would help him be more social and less apt to hide under furniture and woof at nothing in particular.

This led us to buy Polo, a big stupid Samoyed. Finding a Samoyed puppy was more difficult than I would have imagined, so we wound up driving out to some tiny town in the middle of Wisconsin to get him. He is a purebred Samoyed, AKC certified and all that good stuff, so theoretically we could show him at dog shows, if I wasn't convinced that he would eat other dogs and possibly smaller judges in the process. We bought him from a sort of Amish lady and her daughter, whose main ambitions in life were, as far as I could tell, being sort of Amish, and breeding Samoyeds. I say sort of Amish, because although they dressed in 1800's garb and talked with strange accents, they also had cell phones and computers and indoor plumbing and Jonas Brothers posters and stuff. Also, I didn't see them ever drink milk straight from a cow's teat, so that was another strike against them.

Polo obviously wasn't big when we got him, he was a tiny puppy, but very soon he grew into this big, puffy, poorly behaved monster dog, which I suppose is our fault for being bad dog trainers, but still...

Polo is very friendly, and I have to keep reminding myself that even though he's big, he still has a puppy brain, which makes him do dumb things.

So now we have two dogs, who are supposed to be best friends and all that, but really their entire relationship can be summarized like this:

1.) Polo runs over to Jasper and bites his face repeatedly
2.) Jasper hides under something and growls
3.) Polo is egged on by this, and tries to get him out, all the while barking a really annoying high pitched bark that we in our family refer to as "squeekbarking" (If you ever come over, you will hear the following command come out of my mouth at least 5 times an hour. "Polo, for Chrissake stop squeekbarking!")
4.) Jasper reluctantly comes out and lays down and growls while Polo chews on his head.
5.) Polo squeekbarks a lot and Jasper starts sneezing, presumably because Polo is chewing on his nose.
6.) I give them both chewies to shut them up for a minute
7.) Polo eats his chewie quickly and then goes back and re-starts the entire process.

After a while of this I get irritated and let Polo outside, where he proceeds to chase cars driving up and down the road and bark ferociously even though he's in a fenced in backyard and can't get within 40 feet of them. Then he gets tired and jumps up on the kids trampoline and falls asleep. ( A dog sound asleep on a trampoline is a sight to behold.) Then he wakes up and barks a lot at the air, or a leaf, or something else totally superfluous, so I let him back in and he tackles the children and steals their toys or underpants, and then sometimes he jumps in the bathtub and just hangs out in there.

Then we go to sleep, with Polo in our bedroom because if we try to kennel him up he shrieks like a thai hooker. At 5:14 am every morning, Polo wakes up, jumps on the bed, and licks somebody until they let him out. He has a very wide tongue that covers most of your face and it's very rough, like a cat's tongue, so it hurts a lot.

This is the routine in our family, and every day, I realize a little bit more that dogs are just dumb, but I'm probably more dumb for thinking having them would still allow for a peaceful utopia.