Mom, Dad and a Yip Dog

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have to recommend that you take the opportunity now to hit a knee and beg God for forgiveness because I fear the end is close at hand.  At the very least there is a rift in the space time continuum or some other continuum.  There’s definitely a rift in my pre-conceived notions.

 

You see, my parents got a dog.  Not just any dog, but an inside dog.  My wife called me at work and told me this.  When the ampoule of smelling salts brought me back around and my kindly co-workers lifted my jaw back into place, the reality of what she said really began to set in.  I know I read it in the Bible somewhere that when my parents let a dog live inside the house, look out.  It was either in 2^nd Opinions, or the book of Firsts.

 

There is hardly a time that I can recall as a kid where we didn’t have a dog, but dogs stayed where dogs were meant to be.  The likelihood of a dog coming in the house was about as likely as Grandpa’s milk cow curling up by the TV.  I don’t know how my Mom managed it, but she worked full time, kept an immaculate house, did laundry and cooked for me, my brother and my Dad.  There is no way a dog was going to trash the house and undo all her hard work.  They didn’t need a dog for that- they had two boys that took care of it. 

 

The closest that an animal ever came to dwelling in the house was a cat we had for 17 years.  The cat was allowed to come inside because, as I learned, cats are clean creatures.  That said, there was never a litter box inside and even the cat knew her limits.  One time I saw the cat vacuuming the floor to get up the hair before Mom got home.  She knew it was better to face the basset hound from across the street than to dirty up the house.

 

But that’s not the worst of it.  Not only is it an inside dog, but it is a little inside dog.  It is potentially the worst kind of small dog- a yip dog.  I grew up thinking little dogs were an abomination to all of dog-dom.  A dog wasn’t really a dog unless it weighed 40 pounds or more.  Anything less than that put it in the large rodent category.  If it couldn’t get in the bed of Dad’s truck on its own, it wasn’t worthy. (OK, we had one dog with a plump rear end that struggled with this requirement, so we cut him some slack on this ruling.) 

 

I grew up in an area of Florida that attracted more retirees than a bingo parlor with an all day buffet.  These people were often seen carting around their little creature that fell well into the aforementioned rodent category.  They were often tucked under an arm or even worse, stuffed inside a handbag like a little tail-wagging salami.  You’d here those people talking to their pint sized pooches “Can you give Momma a kiss?”  I recall with clarity my Mom saying in disgust “I did NOT give birth to a DOG and I am NOT its mother.”  At that point, a kiss seemed infinitesimally small unless, of course, it was a real dog we were talking about.  It seemed fair enough to me at the time.

 

None of this was helped by the fact that my Grandmother had a little dog that was meaner than a snake.  Or maybe she was just mean because she was old, but I remember being afraid of that little ankle biter.  One time when we were taking care of the dog it bit my Mom with the one remaining tooth it had in its head.  The only thing meaner than that little dog was my Grandma so the dog remained safe, but it didn’t do much to help the small dog image, for sure.

 

Don’t get me wrong.  If an animal needed help, my parents were the first to do so, but it was, at best, a foster home situation.  It got its help on the way to finding its new home.

 

So… now they have a small, inside dog.  I expected them to act differently with me and my brother’s kids than they did with us.  I was waiting and prepared for that one, but this took me off guard.  I can’t help but wonder what other unexpected surprises are looming on the horizon.  So help me, though, if I see them take that dog to the store, you can bet I’ll be watching the sky because that’s a definite sign Jesus will be coming in the clouds.