Day 51
I am dog sitting. Sitting, sometimes literally, with dogs. Actually sitting with dogs on me. Meaning, really literally, ON me … as in lap dog.
The only problem is that the lap dog that is on me is 182 pounds.
Yes, meet Brutus. Big boy Brutus … Bongo Brutus … King of the Kouch (okay, I’m getting carried away) … Brutus.
Also known as Slobberpuss.
Sam has two dogs (small ponies) … Brutus and Carli. Total dog weight, on a thin day, is roughly 314 pounds of canine muscle. And slobber. Not quite sure which outweighs the other … maybe it’s even.
Brutus is a Great Dane/St. Bernard mix … he looks like a very, very large beagle with an extremely sweet face. I have dogs that have faces only a mother would love. Brutus has a face everyone would love. He is all dog and power and sweetness bundled together. But that’s not to say if provoked he wouldn’t bite your head off.
Tonight, when he was sitting on my lap, on the couch, I was petting his velvet barrel-chest telling him what a fine animal he was … and I know he knew what I was saying – I could tell by the way he was looking at me or maybe he was trying to tell me to feed him dinner? I was looking at his teeth and was amazed that they weren’t bigger. I mean, for a dog that size, he should have really giant teeth (one would think).
And so, if provoked maybe he wouldn’t eat your head off but he’d certainly do a bunch of damage. And he’d not even have to use his teeth – all he’d have to do was turn around and whip you a few times with his branch-like tail! Yeow!
Carli is the other dog in residence. She is a true black and white (Harlequin) Great Dane with baby blue eyes and at merely 132 pounds, she is the petite one of the family.
And the attack dog. Well, maybe not for people but for squirrels, small dogs, books, magazines, CD cases and whatever stuffed animal babies might be lying around and within reach (or not quite within reach but within a stretch)!
And for being so big (and yes – they really, really are big) you’d think they’d need a lot of exercise and attention and oddly they are known as apartment dogs! They are fully content to curl up tightly and sleep on the couch (if allowed … or well, even if not allowed) or lounge on their beds – gently sucking the eyeballs off of stuffed animals all day long.
Which is a good thing because trying to walk 132-182 pounds of dog can be hazardous … ask Sam. She took BOTH of them out a few weeks ago and has the scabs and wounded pride to prove just how difficult it is to walk them both at the same time!
As for me – no walking of big dogs, thank you. I’ll just dogsit and talk to them and feed them and toss their babies around … and enjoy every minute of big dog loving. Of course, that also means I’ll be sat on, shed upon and sufficiently slimed … but that’s okay, with six animals of my own – it’s not like I’m not used to it!