One Dog Night

It appears that I won't be seeing the slightly less than full moonrise tonight. It's been raining most of the day and even though the rain has stopped, there is still a thick blanket of clouds overhead. The few spots of blue struggling to gain ground--or rather sky--are too few and far between to help the cause.

So I am resigned to a no-moon night. But I have other entertainment to keep me busy tonight--the final debate of the 2008 Presidential Election. Instead of shivering out on a cold balcony eagerly searching the horizon, I'll be sitting snugly on our couch with our dog, perhaps sipping a toasty cup of cocoa (that would be me sipping cocoa, not the dog). And if the debate becomes too suspenseful for me to watch (ask my family about Packer games), I have a Lia Sophia catalog to browse through for a party a friend of mine will be hostessing next week. Our dog (Oscar) will be sitting on my lap under a blanket either way.

As you can see from his picture, Oscar is a noble dog. Or at least that's what he thinks. His small stature (he is a Min Pin), doesn't affect his self-confidence. He'll bark incessantly at a dog 3 times larger than him as long as it takes for the big dog to walk nonchalantly away. Yes, and he will do that with one paw tied behind his back

Min Pins are considered companion dogs, which is a nice way to indicate they have no other earthly value outside of sitting on their owner's lap, back, neck, legs, etc., making it difficult for one to move freely in one's own home. When they are not sitting on their master's lap they are jumping against him/her like a spring-loaded battery-operated teeny-tiny battering ram. Oscar can jump fairly high. He's usually pummeling my hip when he starts that. Of course, the term "companion" infers that the master is, well, the master. Make no mistake, the Min Pin rules the universe. Try to make one mind and it will demonstrate that it sees no man as his master (no woman, either).

Yes, Oscar is definitely high-maintenance. But he makes up for it by being very strange. Somehow his strangeness endears him to Scott and me. His favorite foods are romaine lettuce and frozen broccoli--when he's not stealing food off our plates, that is. He loves to play with golf balls and can remember where he left one two months ago. He can even find golf balls that are still in the box and quickly frees them with determined chewing. One of my favorite strange things is when he jumps straight up in the air (just like a cat) for no apparent reason. Once again, he can jump pretty high.

But our dog is a loving dog, I think anyway. Recently when Scott left home for a time, Oscar exhibited some classic stages of grief. The first day he sat on one of Scott's shirts and could only be drawn away for food. Classic disbelief. The second or third day he left a little doggy "present" in one's of Scott's shoes. Classic anger. Of course, Scott wants to throw those shoes away. I won't tell him which pair were desecrated.

The moon will rise in a few minutes from the time I'm typing this, but I won't see it. Instead I'll be enjoying spending time with Oscar. If he allows it.