Not content to ruin her own life with empty New Year promises, She put me on the radar last night.
There I am minding my own business in front of the fire, doing the dutiful dog thing, Happy Last Day of 2017 and all that, when I hear her say, “Mungo needs to lose a couple pounds, he’s starting to look like an old Lab.”
Way to ruin a perfectly good evening Jillian Michaels.
I didn’t even need to look up – I knew She was flipping through the latest issue of True Grit magazine, staring at page after page of JRT super-whatever-champions with their rock hard loins, action-dog stances and six-page pedigrees. She’s always been a sucker for a good looking working dog.
Normally, I divert that body-shaming magazine right into the trash bin before either of Them can see it, but I’ve been preoccupied with some high-level napping this month, and this issue slipped by.
Look, I’ve got at least two pages of pedigree and an action-dog stance (just ask Molly), but even if I had rock hard loins you wouldn’t see them under my wiry action-dog coat. Plus, you can’t even go for a pee in this Mid-Atlantic winter without risking death by exposure. I need all the protection I can get out there. Nobody tells baby seals they’ve gotta give up the carbs.
I looked across at those cold blue eyes of Hers peering over the top of Her reading glasses in my direction and sucked in my stomach. She raised her eyebrows in a very unpleasant way.
She was obviously also thinking about pulling out all my hair like they do to those chiseled, stuck-up, possibly-genetically-modified centerfolds in that stupid magazine. This torture is called ‘stripping’ and it’s probably against the Geneva Conventions.
Normally I wouldn’t worry. I’ve got Him wrapped around what’s left of my dew claw. It’s a simple matter of nuzzling into His legs a bit deeper and letting off a couple well-timed sighs of pure contentment.
He subsequently responds as trained and scratches my head protectively against Her control freak tendencies. Later, I will get all the chunks of cheese I need by submitting to one of His random “training sessions” for a new trick and within a week She’ll be distracted by one of the 56 million things she eventually gets distracted by and forget about the entire thing until the next time I forget to trash that magazine.
Sorted.
Except this time, He patted His own stomach and looked at me a little sideways. He likes to keep fit and He’s been feeling it lately.
“You’re getting old, Ratdog – getting fat.”
Wha – WHAT? That is NOT how this goes.
“Gotta get fit again. Lose a couple.”
I looked over at Her again, peering at me with those beady little eyes. She was smirking. I swear she knows what’s going through my mind.
Damn. 2018 is not starting well.
How can anyone so bouncy pick up extra weight? Aren’t your kind the bouncy sort?
He bounces himself up to the cat food table on a regular basis. Then he bounces himself over to the latest deer carcass thrown by the side of the road by hunters that think that’s an okay thing to do because no one could possibly live down a road like this one. Then he bounces himself into the chicken run to finish up whatever scraps they didn’t. Yep, he’s a bouncy sort alright.