If you really want to know who loves you the most — your wife or the dog — try this little experiment.
Lock your wife and your dog in a closet for a couple of hours. After the hours have lapsed, unlock the door and see for yourself who’s glad to see you. Take my word for it: The dog will come out wagging his tail and jumping up and down with excitement, while wifey-poo will come out wagging a wire coat hanger and cussing you for being every kind of low-life miscreant ever invented.
On the other hand, if the dog has an “accident” on the floor, the lady of the house will clean it up and give him a biscuit. Or, if the man happens to be close by, have him clean it up and then give the pup a biscuit. Whether I leave the toilet seat up or down makes no difference — it’s all wrong. Oh, how I wish I were treated like a dog. The baby talk alone would be worth it — “How’s my wittle pupsy wupsy?”
My dog is a 6-year-old westie named Whitey, a little 18-pound hairball who sleeps 23 hours a day and only wakes up to eat or have something rubbed or scratched. Don’t even try to sit by the fireplace — that’s the dog’s spot. If I try to take a nap on the sofa, he thinks that’s a signal to try to sit on my face. If I try to go for a walk, he has to go. If I get in my truck to go somewhere, he has to go.
What amazes me is how psychic the little mutt is. He can tell from 10 miles away if we’re heading to Dr. Blackburn’s office. He’ll start howling like a beagle chasing a fox.
Another mystifying fact is that he can hear the UPS truck when it turns off the highway and heads to my neighborhood. He starts spinning in circles and doing the doggy dance because the big brown truck brings tidings of joy from a guy everyone calls Danny, who has a present for somebody and a pocket full of treats he’s willing to share. He’s always eager to pat Whitey on the head and tell him he’s a good dog. According to my dog — and he never lies — Danny is better than Santa Claus and not nearly as creepy. Last Christmas, I dressed up like Santa and the dog tried to bite me.
I’ve really been working at teaching him some cool tricks. He now growls at the television every time Newt Gingrich and his ever-grinning, ultra-coiffed wife Mrs. Newt appear on the screen. Plus, he really goes bat snot when Jerry Sandusky’s face is shown. Once, he even threw up on the floor. Good dog. Like I’ve said before, my dog is a lot of things but liar isn’t one of them.
Now and then, one will surprise you. Just last week, a 200-pound bull mastiff fell through the ice and was about to drown in a lake up north where they have “frozen” lakes. A kind lady crawled out onto the ice, went into the freezing water and saved the dog. The next day, on a local television show, the dog bit her face off and she had to have extensive facial reconstruction. So much for graciousness.
My dog is not like that — yet.
Once a month, I give him a heart worm pill and a pill that kills fleas. Dr. Blackburn, who has been my vet ever since the dog was born and knows all things canine, told me that the pill doesn’t keep fleas away but only allows the flea to bite once because it poisons the flea and insures that it dies a slow, agonizing death, leaving behind a wife and a 100,000 baby fleas. Now, my thinking is that if it will kill a flea, what is it doing to Whitey’s liver?  But Dr. Blackburn tells me not to fret because he’ll probably fall out of a helicopter or die of old age before the flea medicine gets him. Well, that’s reassuring.
Now, the caveat to this flea pill is he has to take it on a full stomach. So, on flea-pill day, my wife prepares a breakfast for him that any man would die for: eggs benedict with hollandaise sauce and a couple of mimosas. After he devours that and cops a nice glow, she wraps the pill in a piece of cheese — imported, preferably.
She then tells me to have a bowl of Cheerios if the milk’s not sour.
Now, I’m not one to show jealousy, but oh, I would love to have some eggs benedict and get scratched somewhere. And oh, just to hear, “I wuv you Vicky Wicky … woof ... woof.”