Bloody dog!
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| Jazz is very worried about the circus Channel 7 has made over the Tony Abbott interview |
This dog. She drives me insane some days. I try and let her in, do something nice for her, and she comes straight in, dines on the cat litter box, snuffles up whatever she can find and cleans out the cat food as well, ignores me to finish off the delicacies she's finding and then tries to rub her snout on my leg affectionately to butter me up. Not bloody likely! So straight back outside she goes. She ruins it. For. Herself. Daily.
Besides her name, said usually "JAZZ!", Jazz most often hears "Libby" (short for Liberty-taker) and if we're being affectionate, "Stinky", which refers more to her demeanour than her odour.
If there is one thing this dog does well, it's drive me batty. She is the most self-indulgent dog I've ever come across (and I've owned/lived with a few in my life). Not until this puppy came along - six years ago now - did I truly appreciate what a stately, gracious and deeply loyal dog Pepper had always been.
Navigating Jazz's back end inside is no easy task, either. She has the most horribly waggy tail. It goes beyond joyous, happy wagging. This is maiming. Pepper has actually been heard to yelp when it hits her, she is so frail now and Jazz's kangaroo-strength tail is like a vicious whip (to all of us, not just Pep). So we have to quieten her down when she comes inside. We have a little 'foyer' outside the laundry. It works really well for having dogs, as it can be shut off on all sides and creates a small room for them if they need to be inside but we don't want them in the rest of the house while they dry off/cool down. This room suddenly becomes the size of a pin-head if you factor Jazz and The Tail in. Most of the fight is in trying to get her to "SIT!" because if she doesn't, she can hit you so hard in the legs that it actually causes blood vessels to burst. No really, look what happened this one time. And it's not the first time she's done it to me, the horror-
Now that Pep is unsteady on her feet we have to carefully herd her in and outdoors, ensuring she is not bowled over by Jazz and her over-exuberance to be "First! YES! I got in first! I win, I'm the winner, yeahhhh!" I can almost see the thoughts run through her brain, she is that predictable. Such a little turd, she is, always taking liberties and taking/doing as she pleases.
Jazz is highly intelligent. She knows what is expected of her. She knows what's right and wrong, in accordance to what we have consistently taught her over the past six years, and she goes right ahead and takes any advantage she can anyway. She is, quite simply, a little shit. It's lucky for her she is so darn joyful and gorgeous, or she'd be despised. She is a handful. A 28 kilo-full handful.
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| Oh the humanity. Dress-up Day. For dogs. |
Despite all this, I love her. She is gorgeous. She is exceedingly good with the LGBB and they are firm friends. Funnily enough, she gets down low on the floor to play with the LGBB and there has not been one "tail accident" in 4 1/2 years. Jazz is also, quite simply, the most consistently happy thing to have been in my life. Pepper has always been rather an Eeyore type, dewey-eyed and both sympathetic/seeking sympathy with said eyes, she's a real feeler and has always been strongly connected to how I am, so she has had a huge job on her hands and I am ever so thankful to have had her around for the past sixteen years. Sixteen years! She turns 18 this year, good Lord.
But I digress. Jazz. Spazz. Libby. Mrs Babar (thanks to the line from Fletch, in the doctor's office, where the doc tells Fletch to "Just relax, Mr. Babar"... we are constantly trying to get our "Mrs Babar" to "just relax", so that's where this particular moniker comes from - oh yeah, I know, it's confusing living here, huh!?). She is just crazy. Constantly hopped up on the joy of being alive. Half her luck, 'eh? I'd love to see how peppy she'd be if she had to go to a boring life-force-sucking office job, day in, day out. See how jolly she'd be then.
Harumph.
So come on, make me feel better. What do your pets do to wind you up? Tell me about the bad habits of your devillish hound (or cat, who must be obeyed at all times...).
