I figured that I’d better give you another Rosalee update because at the rate she is going this might be her last. If this crazy white dog continues on her path of resistance, I am going to give her away to the closest circus. I swear she is going to pain-in-the-ass night school while we are sleeping. How else can you explain that at ten months of age she is actually getting wilder rather than calmer? Somebody has to be teaching her to be this bad, she can’t be this wicked on her own. I picture one of those yippy little chihuahuas with the bug eyes and a grey muzzle teaching the class, “Our lesson for today, class, is why bother gnawing your chew toys when you get much more attention chewing on everything else.” I’m sure Rosalee is at the top of that class!
The dog has fifty-two different toys that are legal for her to chew, but she prefers wrecking something she is not supposed to. She is chewing on the metal leg of my desk right now while I’m writing this.
The fact that she usually destroys the things she chews is bad, but the real worry is what she swallows. I talked to someone recently who had their young Lab chew and swallow their granddaughter’s little sock. The sock somehow wrapped around the dog’s intestines and, after several costly operations, the dog unfortunately died. So you can’t be too careful. We are constantly taking things away from Rosalee. I have read that a pup goes through a second teething phase from six months until ten months, so hopefully this will be coming to an end soon.
Luckily for her she is also at the top of her class at cute school as well. When she runs to me with her laid-back elephantine ears and the whole back half of her body wagging along with her tail because she is so happy to see me, she is cuter than a baby panda bear riding a rocking horse (those people with lives, please Google).
This cute white devil is also driving my older Lab, Cove, crazy as well. I was hoping he would warm up to her by now but he still wants nothing to do with her. Her cuteness doesn’t play with him whatsoever. He looks at her as if to say, “listen Neophyte, you may have those two, old, two-legged dogs fooled … but not me, sister!” Cove is actually at the point where he is growling at her from time to time, and he is a dog who has never growled at anything in his life. A watchdog he is not. If anyone were ever to break into our house, Cove would follow the burglar around the place, tail wagging. He’d then happily leave with his new friend as they carried out my TV. But I actually love that about him. I don’t want to own a dog that I have to keep telling people, “Don’t worry, he won’t bite,” like some dog owners do. Yeah right…he won’t bite you!
Speaking of biting dogs, I was at my old buddy Mike Hussar’s house the other day and this cute little foo-foo dog came up to me wagging its tail. I asked Mike, “Does your dog bite?” He said “no, absolutely not.” So I reached down to pet the little bugger and it immediately bit me. “Hey!” I yelled looking at my finger for blood,” I thought you said your dog doesn’t bite?” Hussar replied dryly, “That’s not my dog.”
Last week, Rosalee had me the most upset I’ve been since 1991 when Norwood’s kick went wide-right. I had her out in the park for our morning run/training session and she found this dead, rotting crow that must have been under the snow for months. After rolling on it for a few seconds, she picked it up and started to chew it. You think I could get her to drop the rotten remains of this bird, or even get close enough to snatch it away from her? Just like the pheasant guts she found in Montana that I’d told you about in Kraken #1, she would bring the crow within feet of me, but not quite close enough to grab it. Each time I reached for it she would swallow a little more of the foul thing as I tried to remain calm and coax her to me … but she wasn’t having it. For a good twenty minutes I tried everything I knew to get close enough to grab the thing. I even tried the running away while calling her and clapping my hands game. It was working until I slipped on a small patch of ice and did the splits, almost rupturing my sacroiliac. As I lay there mumbling every curse word ever invented, my blood pressure had to be 200 over 200 and my ticker was about to blow. I could just picture the authorities finding me, deader than a doornail, lying in this park in Henrietta with a light dusting of fresh snow covering my body and a crazy white dog still chewing a rotten bird over my stiff corpse, stopping occasionally to lick my blue face with crow guts on her tongue. “Here you go, old man, I’ll bring it to you now that you don’t want it.”
I suddenly remembered that there was a creek on the one end of the park so I walked toward it, not paying any attention to the Kraken as she followed at a distance with the crow carcass hanging out of her mouth. I had knee-high rubber boots on, so once I got to the creek I walked straight out into the middle of the two-foot-deep water. In typical Lab water-loving fashion, Rosalee followed me right into the creek. Once I had her in the water where she couldn’t turn and bolt, I turned quickly and snatched the rotten thing out of her mouth and threw it down the creek, while simultaneously grabbing her collar. My hand was completely under the icy water at that point, but I wasn’t letting go of her collar because I knew she would charge down the creek to grab that bird again. I led her to shore and snapped the leash back on her. I had to use all the restraint I could muster to keep from verbally tearing her a new one as I knew that would do no good at this point. She would have no idea why I was screaming and it would only make things worse during future training sessions.
I silently led her back to my truck while steam blew out of my ears and put her in the backseat. I was so hot, the inside truck windows fogged immediately when I got in. I drove home without saying a word to her, which is rare. I normally have long conversations with my dogs when they ride with me. They are practically experts on politics. When I got home I left her in the backseat and went inside to cool down for a while. When I returned a half-hour later and opened the truck door, her tail was wagging a mile a minute and she sweetly licked my face several times. I petted her head, told her she was a good girl and thought, well, maybe I had overreacted just a bit and she might be a good dog after all. Then I remembered those rotten crow guts she’d just had on that tongue.
Man … that white dog can push my buttons. This time the Kraken could have killed me. Who knows, maybe she did when she licked me on the face with decayed crow germs on her lips. If I die from some strange plague in a few months, somebody please remember that lick.
Rosalee Hendrick continues to win the battles. I think the score is 520 to 2 at this point, but I assure you that I will win the war. Even if it kills me.
Boy… I sure am glad I drove all the way to Minnesota to get a pup out of this extra calm bloodline!
