Love, Unleashed

My kids are all bugging me to get a puppy. A puppy to keep Manny company. Yes, those kids; the one in Japan, the one who lives downtown when she's not out of town traveling four days a week, and the one who still lives at home, mostly behind her closed bedroom door. Yes, that one, the one that complains constantly that Manny smells.

Naturally, all three have promised at one time or another to help with the new puppy (yes, the one that somehow won't smell like a dog). Maybe I heard them wrong when they promised to take care of the other two. Or maybe this time they really mean it. Actually, I think they really meant it those other times too. Kind of like I meant to do all my laundry yesterday.

Anyway, the latest puppy breed being bandied about is a French bulldog. Le bouledogue franćais. In a book called The Intelligence of Dogs, Frenchie is ranked 58th in a list that doesn't seem to extend beyond sixty something. Un chien stupide. Mon dieu! Leo, my beloved lab, hardly a rocket scientist, would have been in the top ten, which, let's just say, doesn't bode well for number 58.

Manny, a puggle - not just any mutt, but a designer mutt -- does not make it to the list. Blind as a bat and fat as a whelk, he has a keen beagle nose that somehow cannot detect a piece of sausage held only inches away. Bottom third of the class material. But put a morsel of chocolate inside an airtight container and place it out of reach of your average obese dog with stubby legs and he is brilliant, ingenious, an athlete to boot. A canine Houdini, he can sniff out the most undetectable speck of any variety of chocolate in any form, leaping tall tables in some sort of single bound (not sure what it looks like; he's a sneak) and penetrating packaging like a professional safe cracker. As far as I can tell, in terms of intelligence, Manny is pretty much an off the charts idiot savant, and my guess is that some dopey French pure bred won't have a chance. Most likely, the poor unsuspecting pup would spend much of his young life as Manny's step stool, a small fish of a soldier in his older buddy's criminal enterprises.

Maybe it has nothing to do with intelligence. Maybe it's just his addiction to food, his willingness to do anything for a fix, even though the vet and I have explained to him many times it's not good for him. Maybe it's something far less negative or sinister; maybe Manny has perfected his cunning brand of thievery so he could one day reciprocate for all the shit he has put me through. (Literally, shit; on the family room floor, in the kitchen, by the foot of my bed.) Case in point: last weekend, when Manny somehow got into an un-get-into-able chocolate cake that our dog sitter, Sue, had purchased, he was performing a service for both her and me, the hands that feed him. Sue was so freaked out that she had somehow done something (i.e. putting a boxed chocolate cake high up on a table not surrounded by a single chair) to endanger him that she refused to take money for three days of care taking. We're still in negotiations, but, at least temporarily, I've got a few extra dollars in my pocket I hadn't counted on. Aw, Manny is concerned about my financial situation. And, Sue was so freaked out that she had somehow done something to endanger him that four days of painful constipation was suddenly cured. She told me she felt ten pounds lighter. Aw, Manny was tuned into her bloat. He wanted her to feel better.

I'm going with the unconditional love theory. Maybe, if I get a puppy, Manny will walk him and feed him and clean up after him, just to thank me for a new friend (and, no doubt, partner in crime), and all the other things I've done for him. Or maybe my kids will do it. Mon dieu, sometimes I just crack myself up!