White Trash and Dogs

Tanya has also got into mud wrestling. That may come as a surprise to many of you as I could imagine as you might see it as improper or trashy. But you’ve got to understand that “White Trash” is really big at the moment. Pole Dancing, Speed Dating, Crystal Meth, heck if it’s good enough for Kate Moss… (though she did coke) Of course it’s not real mud. It’s that health spa stuff, and the rules are basically 1. “Don’t pull hair” 2. “Stop if the other person ceases to move”, except they don’t use the word ‘cease’ because it confuses some of the participants. Instead the instructors use phrases like “please stop if you think the other person is dead”.

Actually this is all a lie. She does go to the gym though. And some of the people she knows do pole dancing. And some of those people do it on the grounds that it’s for fitness. And please don’t write to me about using a conjunction at the start of a sentence because it’s all the rage with White Trash.

And now to mistakes. We were sitting round with some friends who were talking about buying a dog. During the discussion they mentioned that one of the pups they had seen was going to be put down because it suffered from a slipping patella. It was a Fox Terrier pup worth $600, getting chucked out because of a dodgy knee. Hope these people never open a nursing home. Anyway, these folk were going to give the dog away if someone would take care of him. Have I mentioned that Fox Terriers are bred to kill foxes. Anyway I went to check him out. My friend directed my attention to this cute little dog, actually handed it to me to hold. We bonded immediately. My friend, Giff, and I sat amongst the two pups that were left. This dog seemed absolutely fantastic, much better than the other idiot pup that lumbered around like Frankenstein’s monster - tearing the place up. Damn thing also took a piece out of my thumb – idiot. I expressed my satisfaction with the animal to the owners and my surprise that no one liked it. I was promptly handed Frankenstein’s monster. The damn thing one. The idiot.

There was an awkward silence. Followed by another.

The desire to express the thought that perhaps destroying him was for the best was left unspoken and Giff and I proceeded home with Frankenstein's monster; just to see if he got on with everyone. He stayed the night and the new dog and our old dog (car accident survivor veteran) got on quite well. What I omit to mention is what stands as substantially more significant. My wife and the new dog did not get on quite well. Ollie (short for Oliver – my daughter’s idea) couldn’t speak English at all and never understood what Tanya meant by “I hope he doesn’t dig up the plants”. Of course if he did understand I could only put it down to the fact his knee was causing him terrible pain and he didn’t wish to live any longer. Suffice to say he should be called a tree/shrub terrier In hindsight I should have given him a couple of foxes to tear up.

The other intriguing thing is Ollie is quite vengeful when it comes to reticulation. Something about the way they jump out the ground when he least expects it and wets him. Just him, not the grass, or the trees, or the house or the other dog. Just him. So he waits until everything goes quite and then he digs up the reticulation. Every other morning I wake up to the tirade of abuse my wife directs at Ollie about some such thing. These vary now. Clothes pulled off the line, barking rudely, jumping up on a fresh cleaned pair of pants, eating something he shouldn’t, not being dead. But the reticulation was the stone end. I thought “Right, he needs to be set straight”.

Tanya had left the house and I smashed a window.

That’s a bit of a jump in the story, but I’m worried I am going on, so I thought I would get to the point. I walked out to the sight of Ollie tearing up reticulation. Coffee in hand I yelled out "Oi". Ollie did not respond to my clearly articulated requests to desist. So I tapped the window with my shoe/boot.

Glass, pretty lame stuff really. Who would have thought? Great to look through, not that resilient. Dog stopped digging though. Getting showered in glass kind of got his attention. It was like an action movie. The only thing missing was a bad guy getting tossed through the window. That happened later when Tanya heard my story. Sure, I come out looking like a lunatic. “So, you got angry at the dog and smashed the window?”

“Not in that order, but yes.”