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(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Reminiscences On My Irresponsible Youth #1: Good Boy!

One time, when I was living with a work supervisor, her two sisters, and her dog Max, I spent a lot of time working with Max while the others weren't around, training him to snatch towels off and run away with them.

The perfect crime! How could anybody get wise to that little man-dog conspiracy? Max was so dumb, and so poorly-behaved, so unobedient and uncoachable in general, that nobody would ever think he could be trained to do anything useful!

That dog! GOOD BOY, MAX!

OK. I lied about the towels. That dog really was totally untrainable for anything.

All he wanted to do was play tug of war with that towel, but he couldn't process the idea of going after a towel that was not actively being offered for a tug of war. An easy leap to make, one would think! But no. A towel being flapped at him from an extended arm was like dognip to Max, but one tightly-wrapped, wound snug and precarious around a freshly-toweled torso? That held about as much interest as a ball that had stopped bouncing from the throw.

That dog! You couldn't play fetch with him if you only had one tennis ball. You had to have two. The only way you were going to get the one in his mouth away from him was to throw him the other.

Good boy, Max.

1 comment:

dogimo said...

OK, so I feel like I should give a little background here, because there's something a bit unsavory lurking between the clean-cut lines of the above post. Just a bit. You've all heard, "inspired by a true story," well here's the true story version: Cindy was standing there in the door arch to the kitchen in just her towel, and she and I were talking, just shooting the breeze - I was in the Lay-Z Boy and had the tv on in the background and was just kind of turning my head talking to her, there was nothing shady or salacious going on whatsoever. She might even have been brushing her teeth, or holding a toothbrush at least. But maybe she was just standing there, chilling and laughing, shooting the breeze.

I swear, she was the coolest boss!

Anyway, Max comes bounding in all excited over nothing like a moron like always, jumping around between the two of us, jumping up on her, she kind of quick-grabs to make sure everything's secure - which it was, no slips or oopses. But just to be funny, I say in my 'fetch' voice - "Get the towel Max! Get the towel Max! C'mon good boy get the towel good boy Max!" and Cindy was like - OH NO YOU DI-INT (before that was all cliche and shit. But anyway, she didn't say that she was just like that).

It was all very jovial and innocent - a spur of the moment lark remark! I didn't actually plan a whole campaign around it. I already knew better than that with that dog.

Anyway, this was all well before I had my feminist revelation.