The Loud Buzzing Sound

June 7, 2007 · Filed under Doggs, Smackimus

At the risk of making this sound like a blog about our doggs and how distorted our perspective is about them, it’s time to talk about Smackimus Desmus Meridius (Mack for short).

Mack, I’m quite convinced, was a gladiator in a past life. He is incredibly smart, built like a brick shithouse (or was it a shit brickhouse?), and the most insane athlete you can imagine. As a gladiator, he would have had absolutely no problem taking out Tigris of Gaul. In fact, even in his current life, he still routinely tears through one of his toys, jumps up, and gives us a defiant look that says, “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?”

He’s wicked smart, and, in sharp contrast to our other dog, actually has instincts left. (OK, technically Beene does have one instinct, but I’m not sure “run like a retard in the opposite direction of the noise” really counts as an “instinct” but serves more as “strategery to make things suck”.) I’m convinced that if Mack broke out into the wild, he would not only thrive, but be considerably better off than he is now. He would also somehow overcome the handicap of having been neutered and still father a gaggle of mini-Macks.

As you may have noticed in the many photos of Beene, Mack is missing from all of them. This is not because we’re ignoring him or Photoshopping him out of the pictures. No, this is because during every moment spent out of doors, Mack is engaging in one of the following activities:

• Patrolling a Pachinko
• Making sure no armadillos are infiltrating our perimeter
• Squeaking any and all squeak toys he can find
• Verifying that any toys that were not squeak toys upon last inspection have not become squeak toys since then
• Trying to eat bird seed that the birds have knocked out of their feeder (slobs)
• Calculating the various trajectories that woud need to be employed to neutralize any threats that might present themselves

None of these are frivolous activities such as cold chillin’ on someone’s lap and demolishing chairs in the process. No, he is involved in practical tasks that serve to better the world.

So, I mentioned he is really smart. That’s cool, because it has made him a really well-behaved and well-mannered dog. That said, it also means that once he gets something in his head, he is completely one-track minded about the affair.

Take, for instance, our most recent trip to the pet store, Bark, in Ballard. We took both dogs down to buy rain coats for them. Yes, I know, this is idiotic. However, as you may have heard, rainfall is not entirely rare in Seattle, and while Mack has a downy layer of fur to keep him warm, Beene is an evolutionary anomaly and, due to the chilling effect of wet fir, reacts in one of two ways to rainfall. The first is to shake like a leaf and refuse to move. Not good when the dog weighs 150 pounds and shrieks like she’s being murdered when you pull firmly on her leash. The second is to bound and leap, no doubt in an effort to stay warm. This is also bad if the dog weighs 150 pounds and you like the way your vertebrae and shoulders are configured. Also see the note about shrieking in response to a firm yank on the leash, which inadvertently happens while she’s lunging around. (Then combine that with her one “instinct”. That is what I call a “vicious cycle”. The end of the cycle, incidentally, involves the person at the other end of the leash trolling for asphalt with their face.)

Anyway, we were in the market for doggie rain coats, and Bark had a sale. We figured it would be nice to get Mack one while we were at it. When we brought Mack into the store, our normally well-mannered dog went bananas in response to all the animal smells he encountered. When the lady behind the counter gave them each a treat, his ears stopped functioning and his brain simply became an ornament. All he could hear was a loud buzzing sound. I’m pretty sure he was also cross-eyed during this time. He scrounged around like a damn bloodhound with his nose to the ground, or balanced on his back legs, looking for treats on counter tops. There were several cases where he was chewing something crunchy, but I’m not convinced they were treats. I don’t want to think about what he actually did find.

We were never able to get him to sit still long enough to try a coat on and we had to guess what size to get him. I hope it fits.

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