Brushing Mrs. Wigglebottom

The nice thing about grooming Mrs. Wigglebottom is that she doesn’t require a whole lot of it.  She has short hair and she lives in the house so she needs a bath every four to six weeks, a bone to keep her teeth in good shape, and walking on concrete to keep her nails a reasonable length.

Occasionally, she needs to be brushed.  You can tell when this is because she will, when being pet, shed hair like she’s a one-woman wig factory.  And lately, she’s been shedding a lot of very short coarse black hair, which leads me to believe she might have an undercoat that she is attempting to shed because of the hot weather.

So, I tried to brush her this morning.  If only I had a video camera.  Because Mrs. Wigglebottom loves to be brushed, which makes it very difficult to brush her.  You call her over, she sees the brush, she gets all excited and starts leaping all over the place and being all “roo roo roo.”  Then she comes over and sits just as close to you as she can possibly get, which actually makes it very difficult to get at her.  Then she immediately collapses onto the ground and rolls over on her back. 

Her belly has very little hair, so I don’t really need to brush it, but oh, how she wants me to brush her belly.  So, what should be just five or ten minutes turns into fifteen or twenty as she’s rolling around, running off to grab her bone, bounding back over, licking me, licking the brush, barking, and leaping around.

Finally, I set the brush down.  “Fine.  We’re done.”

And now she’s laying next to the brush with the saddest look ever on her face.

The Pitbull Quiz

I’ve now sat down to write this post three times and every time I sit down to write, I start off "Fuck you motherfuckers.  Just fuck you."  And then I think, "That’s not conducive to conversation and it makes you seem like an irrational crazy bitch."  So, then I get up, walk around a little, and check to see if the Uncle has written anything about it yet.

He has not.

But, as you all know, the Libertarian Uncle and the Hippy Liberal Aunt of all you folks out there on the internet share common ground on one thing: dogs.  In fact, I suspect that our common ground on dogs makes us a lot more tolerant of each other’s opinions on the things we don’t share in common*.

And, in fact, I often count on the Uncle to write calm rational responses to anti-pitbull nonsense when I cannot.  And yet, I suspect that he’s grown tired of saying the truth and having it ignored in the face of sensationalism.

So, I’m going to try to get through this in a calm and rational manner.  By giving out a little pop quiz.  Take out your pencils folks.

1.  Christian Grantham, you call "pitbulls" a "vicious and uncontrollable breed."  Would you please give the internet your definition of a breed?  What are some defining characteristics of this breed?  How will police officers know which dogs are of the pitbull breed in order to enforce this ban?  Would you ban this dog?  This dog?  This dog?  This poor idiot dog?  Mrs. Wigglebottom?  Which ones of these dogs are "pitbulls"?  The Tennessean, I ask the same questions of you.  I also expect you as a newspaper, which is, you know, supposed to do some god damn motherfucking reporting to ask the same god damn questions of Putnam County Sheriff David Andrews and State Sen. Doug Jackson.

2.  Why, upon viewing the video in the Grantham link, is the "correct" conclusion supposed to be that the dogs are the problem and not the owner who refrains from jumping in and taking control of the situation?  Why is she grabbing the child and not restraining the dogs?  One of the dogs appears to be wearing some kind of halter and the other dog could be grabbed by the scruff of the neck.  I’m not excusing the dogs’ attack and it did seem necessary for the police officer to fire his weapon.  But it was necessary for the police officer to fire his weapon because the dogs’ owner made no attempt to control the dogs.  How then is this a problem with the dogs and not with the owner and her poor dog owning skills?  I mean, if that video showed us anything, it’s that those dogs respond to displays of dominance.  Once that cop shot that dog, he just had to raise his gun again to get the dog to back off.  Again, not that I’m advocating shooting at dogs, I’m just saying this seem to me to be proof that the dogs respond well to following the wishes of someone who can establish dominance.  So, why isn’t the owner to blame for not establishing proper dominance over her dogs?

3.  Why must I be punished because other people are idiots?  And, Mr. Grantham, would you be standing there with me if I have to put Mrs. Wigglebottom down, should your wish for a breed ban go into effect or do you prefer to hide from the pain and suffering that would result from you getting your way?

I could go on, but I think those are the three most important points.

 

 

*Do libertarians believe in sharing things "in common" or is that an insult because it suggests some mild form of socialism?  I don’t mean it as an insult, Uncle.

Ha, see, I can write this post now because my sense of humor has returned.