The Fine Art Of Being A Terrible Guest

Truffles and I met with a trainer recently to try to combat her bad behavior and stop her from being an all around chubby jerk. She often refuses to go on walks, preferring instead to watch the PBS newshour and lick her own butt while my husband occasionally tosses her tortilla chips. Well, it's a new day and we're not going to allow that anymore, as long as she's willing to stop doing it. . .

As part of getting her to take walks to lose weight, I have to drive her to new and interesting places filled with dog pee she hasn't smelled before. Really. So I've been setting aside a few hours a week to take her somewhere she hasn't been where she'll walk like a normal dog who likes to take walks and occasionally pee on stuff rather than a fat little weirdo who will hold her business for as long as possible because she doesn't feel like getting off the couch.

Sometimes I get lucky and I can take her on a little play date, or invite one of her pooch pals over, like little Jimmy Dean here who slept over, jumped off the bed in the middle of the night to take a crap on the floor, and then climbed back in for a nice cuddle:

She has this other friend, Dokie, with a giant yard that she can poop as much as she wants in. He also has a huge supply of interesting toys. Check out her sweet little pal:

He's a good boy, but his owners like to keep a shock collar (the orange band) on him just to let him know it's a possibility. He's been shocked about three times in three years at level 1, I am assured. We happen to disagree on this point and when I see the collar, I have to look away. I might even well up a bit and tearily eat some junior mints to forget about poor Dokie getting zapped by a torture device. Today he rolled around in wild animal poop and smeared it all over his collar. I get it, man.

I admit that Dokie is significantly better behaved than Truffles. As I sat outside with the dogs while a very important cheese plate was prepared in my honor, the little toddler that lives with Dokie grabbed a walkie-talkie from the table and tossed it into his water table to "wash" it. I giggled for a minute before remembering that electronics don't belong under water, so I pulled it out and wiped it off on my shirt. Kids!

I tried testing it out to see if it still worked, pressed a few buttons, talked into it, turned the dials and such. The dogs started whining for the cheese plate, which finally arrived. As I made my way about 3/4 of the way through a package of wasabe rice crackers and double fisted a few string cheeses, I delicately brought up the broken walkie talkie and how I may not have caught it in time.

"Eh, it's still supposed to work even if it gets wet, don't worry."
"Wow, that's pretty cool. I did try it out and couldn't get any sound out of it. Did you hear me?"
blank stare
"It's not a walkie talkie, it's the remote control for Dokie's shock collar."

Heh. Umm, kidding?

I definitely shocked the hell out of that dog.

This would never have happened if Truffles wasn't so fat and lazy. It's her fault Dokie almost got the death penalty.