The Man

In September last year we adopted Jack.  Jack was meant to be a ‘small dog’ for Daniel.  Suffice it to say that, because he is a dog of Pavement Origin, he is now thigh height and about 9 months old.  I shudder to think.

Jack likes to make us think that he isn’t clever.  Jack likes to lie in the girls’ room in the sun in the morning with the cat.  Jack likes to eat food off the table and out of children’s hands.  Jack loves digging up the same flower pot every day, despite heavy stones that are meant to deter him.  Jack will eat almost anything that doesn’t closely resemble broccoli.  Jack also likes to snack on the cat’s food when passing by.

Jack is also a real wuss.  He has never allowed us to put a choke chain of any shape or form around his neck and when we bought him a harness he was not impressed.  When we put it on him the first few times he would just roll over and lie on the ground.  Not very encouraging then.

I had 30 minutes to do a quick walk this morning, looked at him and thought HA I’m going to give it a bash.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m no special dog person.  In fact, when patience gets allocated in this house he is pretty far down the line.

So, I lure him to the gate, spend 3 minutes figuring out the harness, only for him to slip out of the bloody thing and I spend another 3 minutes trying to re-attach.  After much clucking and whistling he eventually leopard crawls out the gate.  And stops.

5 steps on the driveway and onto the sidewalk where we have a large tree he flops down on the ground, sniffing away and crawling toward the tree with me coaxing him to get up and walkies.  Spectacularly unsuccessfully of course.  And every time a car drives by he cowers, poor guy.

He eventually crawled up to the next tree and the tree thereafter, never actually walking.  Every now again he would tease me and I would think we might hit the tar, but alas.

I eventually managed to turn him around and sweet-talk him down the hill where he found a lovely little patch of flowers and made himself very comfortable.  It took all my will-power not to scream and drag him back up the hill and into our gate but I sweetly chatted to him all the while praying that the neighbours aren’t watching and laughing hysterically.  Even the cars that drove by looked at us funny.

All of that took exactly 30 minutes.

Imagine my surprise when I get home this afternoon and open the garage door for Mr to come dashing out and strutting around like he is The Man.  He’s even found his voice all of a sudden and now thinks he’s a real guard dog.

So I guess I’ll give it another bash in the morning.

Sigh.