the blog quebecois

who let the dogs out?
woof, woof, woof, woof, woof
who let the dogs out?

-- baha men

My sister and her husband moved from British Columbia and bought a new house here but they didn't take possession until the end of September and they wanted to get the kids enrolled in school, so my sister and her three girls stayed here from the middle of August until then. (Hubby's working up North.)

Oh, and also their two enormous dogs. One of them, "Sam," is some kind of collie mix. He displays herding behavior like zigzagging around from behind when you let him off his leash.

He'd probably make a good sheepdog, guarding the little lambies from wolves. Unless the wolves attacked with vacuum cleaners. He gets absolutely freaked out by vacuum cleaners. Tough luck then, lambies..

The other dog is allegedly a pure Black Labrador, but I think he's got some . . . Shetland pony genes. He's huge. Fortunately he's also the gentlest big dog that I've ever known; the gentlest four-legged carnivorous eating machine that you've ever seen. Also one of the stupidest, as my sister reminded me as she tried to separate him from a handful of plastic-barreled Q-Tips he was attempting to ingest.

"Oh, these really aren't good for him." she said.

He fulfilled the role that dogs have played since time immemorial -- to stand guard in the night where I least expected him, so that he might protect me from other jet-black beasts that I might trip over on the way to the john at 3 a.m.

As I lay broken and insensate on the living room floor "Butch" would indicate his concern by bringing over his favorite chew toy for my consolation. And you know what? It wasn't half bad, once you got past the dog-slobber.

It all took me back to my childhood . . .

memories
may be beautiful and yet
what’s too painful to remember
we simply choose to forget

-- barbra streisand

Undaunted, I charged down the hallway into the living room, and there I found, silhouetted in the early light . . . a doggie! This would be the bestest birthday ever!

Now, unbeknownst to me, my aunt and uncle had come in from out of town late and were staying over, with their two newly-acquired German Shepherd police dogs, which had been recently decommissioned or drummed out of the K-9 Corps in disgrace or something.

Crying "A doggie!"; and then "two doggies!" I raced to embrace my new friends and then one of my new friends knocked me to the floor with a very big paw and sat on my chest.

And the other one sat on my face. When I started to squirm around, they'd bare their teeth and make growly noises, so I accepted my grim, muffled fate until the adults finally woke up and rescued me.

So that was my fourth birthday. No wonder I'm so screwed up.