I Might Be Reaching My Breaking Point

My plan was to finally write a column related to sports for the first time in a while. As you know, sports is not exactly front and center right now, so it's hard to write about something that people are not worrying about. Although that usually doesn't stop me.

Instead I've gotten my blood pressure up to a dangerous level because of two rapscallions.

My wife and I have our final two dogs we will ever have, two Jack Russell terrorists. Ellie will be fourteen this year, and Mabel will be thirteen, if I let them live that long. And there is the thing that has me worried. Today I hate them both.

We have had a slew of terriers over the years and we know what a handful they can be. Mostly we love their energy and their personalities, and they have made us laugh hundreds of times. They are loving and smart and tough too.

They also have a dark side.

They are manipulative, sneaky, frustrating, and have an innate ability to train their owners to do what they want on command. Its that part of them that makes me hate them today. For the past seventy-two weeks we have been in captivity, they have figured out that they now have more time, and opportunities, to add some tricks they can teach us to their bag of manipulation.

These little monsters have figured out that if they get up at say, one o'clock in the morning, and stand by the bedroom door crying, that dad will get his fat sorry ass out of bed and let them outside. They then fall back happily asleep while dad walks around the house for two hours and finally gives up.

Do they leave their evil at that, of course not. Now that the fat man has learned that trick, let's make him and mom let us out all day long while we sniff everything in the dog run and then saunter back to the front door to be let back in the house. They've taught us to do this trick fifteen to twenty times a day.

After each meal, they sit and stare at us until we give in and give them a dog biscuit at which time the ungrateful little heathens race back to grandma's room where she shovels two more into their little mouths. Greedy little bastards.

Today after forty-five minutes of in and out, and crying and barking, and not doing a damn thing once outside but stroll around the yard, where it is a comfortable 102 degrees today, I finally snapped. I grabbed each one, and wanted to wring their necks, but instead put them in separate rooms and gated them so they couldn't get out. Time for daddy to teach some lessons.

That lasted for ten minutes, until it was supper time, which is now sometime between 3:30 and 4:00 instead of the 5:30ish it started out to be. Another thing on their list of new tricks they've trained us to do. So we feed them and immediately they both run to the front door and start barking to be let out. Twenty-one times.

Out they go, and, do nothing once again. This is when I began to contemplate murder.

By now Linda looks like she is going to completely lose her mind between the dogs, the heat, and the torn labrum in her hip. She cracks first, grabs the two devil dogs, and says she is going to bed, she has had enough for one day. I'm left with all this anger and nobody to take it out on, and I can't even go someplace and push an old man down or anything.

I would never do that. Anymore.

For years when people asked if we had children, I would cleverly say, "we couldn't control the dogs so kids were out of the question." They laughed and that was that but they never realized how true it really was. Can you imagine us having kids? We would be those parents we hate when we see them in public someplace letting their kids run wild.

I think it helped to get all this out of my system as I feel much better now. Thanks for letting me vent, I know you have your own problems. For me, I guess I'll just let sleeping dogs lie.