The dance I refer to is not to be confused with the "Pull-ups Potty Dance" - the most insipid of all insipid TV commercials. You know the one I'm talking about? "Put your left hand out, put the right on top, shake 'em together and do the potty dance - whoop whoop!" - AS IF doing this stupid dance to the most insipid tune ever will somehow entice a small child to ask to go potty. I've never toilet trained a small child, but I'm just saying - I don't think this song & dance number is the way to go.
No, the dance I'm talking about is the nightly jig that starts somewhere between 4:30 and 6:00. EVERY NIGHT. I have no idea how my big, brown, beastly boy knows what time it is, but he does somehow. He's very clever that way. Not that he wears a watch or reads digital numbers from the stove or anything. But every night between the prescribed hours of 4:30 & 6:00 he starts his dance. The first act of this three part number is a little random pacing back and forth between wherever I am and his dinner bowl. "I'm just checking to see if you realize that there are starving dogs on PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND?"
Sometimes the bowl and I are in the same room, but often we're not, resulting in the incessant tap-tap-tapping of dog claws on hardwood and/or ceramic tile. Back and forth. BACK. AND. FORTH. There is nothing quite so nerve-grating as that tap-tap-tap, unless of course it's the mini tap-tap-tapping of his canine sibling, who has now joined the gig and is tap-tap-tapping alongside him.
A brief respite while he relaxes between sets in his bed - where he has been instructed to go - BED! NOW! And I mean brief respite - maybe 1, 1.5 minutes. And then it begins all over again. The second set of his act has a creative flair to it. I call it the I Will Bore Holes in the Side of Your Head with My Kryptonite Stare Until There is Food in My Dish! part of the act. Honest to God, this dog can stare without blinking for 10 minutes straight. It's a wonder he isn't walleyed.
Act three starts with a fake-out request to go outside - "PSYCH! Didn't need to go outside at all, but when I come in the magic food fairy will have visited my bowl - I JUST KNOW IT!" Clearly by act three he is famished beyond all recognition, having shed 48 of his 50 lbs in the mere act of dancing for his dinner. I know, I am a hateful dog owner and should not be allowed to keep one, let alone two animals.
But here's the thing. My big brown beastly boy was a rescue dog. His first owner starved him - daily. The trauma of spending his first 10 months of life never knowing if he would ever be fed again has scarred him in ways I couldn't imagine when I brought him home 10 years ago. We've survived 10 years together where he has been fed two meals a day, plus anything he could steal from kitchen counters, garbage cans and tables, not to mention countless bags of Snausages monthly and STILL he doesn't remember that in our home there will always be food for a big brown beastly boy. Some would say he has issues, and I'd be the first one to agree. But even with all his neurosis (and there are many) I wouldn't trade him for all the little Australian Silkies in the world.
