Posts Tagged ‘Brendan the dog’

See the pretty Choo Choo

Sunday, September 11th, 2011

By Tiber

Well, it’s the official end of summer. This is not because of Labor Day. It’s  because Cax, our dog, has decided to finally put away his sunglasses for the year.

You’ll remember how last year, when Cax had some eye medication put in and Dad had jokingly placed his own sunglasses on him, the dog loved them so much, he wouldn’t leave without them.

Well, this summer was no different.

It’s just that when Dad balked about loaning the dog his own shades again, one of Mom’s insane, animal-loving friends bought Cax his own pair of Jimmy Choo glasses.

These probably cost more than my entire wardrobe and clearly Brendan, our other dog, has been none too pleased about them.

I think he mostly thinks Cax just looks like an ass in general. But I also think that the price of anything Jimmy Choo has seeped down even into the canine world and we clearly have some jealousy involved.

It’s a good thing Cax decided at last to leave off the shades on his own.

I could see that soon, Brendan was going to start refusing to eat…unless we got him his own Louis XIV golden bowl.

The Dogtona 500

Sunday, June 26th, 2011

By Tiber 

We’re not even up to the official “dog days of summer” yet but the increasing heat and boredom around here inevitably has led to more dog races.

We actually have a ballroom/picture gallery here in the house on the ground floor. Obviously, we’re not giving any balls these days so the triplets decided this large, empty space would be perfect for the latest running of the Dogtona 500.

God only know what the kids smeared on the bottom of their skateboards but when they took off around the ballroom, the dogs, Cax and Brendan, went crazy with joy, insanely speeding and saliva-spewing right after them.

The noise, of course, soon brought in a furious Dad, who “saved” the dogs from the race and took them back to his study.

I passed by the open door later but the dogs weren’t comfortably napping. Dad was at his training again.

You may remember how Dad once read where the actor Hugh Grant’s father had attempted for years to get their cat to wave back to him.

It never worked.

But ever since then, Dad has periodically tried it with our dogs. He’ll wave at them for hours but, so far, Cax and Brendan have never even raised a paw.

My guess is, though, that they will. It won’t be for a wave, however.

This whole thing has got to be so annoying for them, I fully expect that someday, at least one dog will sigh, roll his eyes, give in, raise that paw, swivel it around and finally shoot Dad the bird.

Release the hounds!

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

 

By Tiber

The dogs, Cax and Brendan, are now insanely racing through the halls pretty much all night long.

Why?

Well, as you know, we think we have a monkey loose in the house. The dogs would definitely chase that.

But also, the house is haunted and the dogs frequently flee from the ghosts.

Plus, we have the unknown old woman Mom spotted up on the attic floor. We still don’t know who she is but she’s probably still in residence – making her both a chase or a flee for the dogs, depending on the old lady’s mood.

And of course, ever since Dad has been trying to get us to eat Spam to save money, everyone has been hiding it all over the house. And whenever the dogs find a piece of that, it becomes the puck in a demented game of snout-hockey.

So, all in all, I think we will just have to accept the fact that there will be no more sleeping here. Ever.

We now live right in the middle of the Dogtona 500.

The (very brief) Return Of Jasper The Renter

Friday, June 11th, 2010

By Tiber

As you may recall from my April post, “Not in Bruges,” Dad rented out a room up here on the third floor to an associate of a friend, who is here on business from Belgium.

His name is Jasper. And Jasper is such a nice person, I’m sure he felt that in coming to stay with such a big and active family as ours, rather than in a hotel, it would give him a real sense of home. The reality, of course, has probably made him want to drive at warp speed to the nearest family planning facility and donate all of his money.

On Jasper’s first night, we forgot to tell Aunt April he was staying here and, seeing him heading for the bathroom in the middle of the night, she went after him with a pitchfork. It bears repeating, how many people do you know who even have a pitchfork in their garage, much less in their bedroom?!?

Then, of course, Jasper accidentally witnessed the horror of the triplets on Easter morning, when they basically explode from the house in camo and ammo and conduct a scorched earth policy until they snag those eggs.

So because of these, and probably other events as well, Jasper has been coming downstairs for dinner less and less.

Dad, whose personality is even larger than, say, “expansive,” thinks Jasper is just shy. And Dad does not “get” shy. “Where’s the hell’s the fun in it?!?”

So he came up to Jasper’s bedroom and ordered, sorry, “invited” Jasper to come down for dinner tonight and enjoy a game of pool with him beforehand.

What we now think happened is that, since Jasper had been planning on snacking in his room, he’d had some Spam in his hand, which he then stuffed into his pocket when Dad coerced him downstairs.

They were in the billiard room under a minute when Dad’s two dogs came in and joyously yelped that it must be Christmas all over again!

Back in December, Dad had given us all the “gift” of a case of Spam, trying to get us to save money on food. Instead of eating it, however,  family members had just hidden their portions on and around the tree. The dogs were ecstatic, thinking the new Spam tree was the greatest present ever. And they dragged the whole thing, ornaments and all, outside for their own celebration.

And now, here was more Spam! And this time, it was hidden on this Jasper, who clearly was a 165 lb. Belgian doggie chew-toy!

Jasper took off, with the dogs right behind him and Dad calling out futilely, “They’re very gentle! They’re not going to hurt you!”

I don’t know, owners always say that but even if you had two large, perpetually hungry, out-of-control, pointy-toothed, slobber-spewing people coming after you, I think you’d run too.

Yeah, yeah, I see you

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

By Tiber

I was going to Dad’s study to ask him a question, when I caught him standing in the middle of the room with one of his arms flailing. He was alone, except for the dogs, so I raced in, thinking he’d had a stroke or something.

It turns out that with everybody trying to come up with money-making schemes, Dad has been working on an attraction of his own that people might pay to see.

He told me about an article he’d read online recalling how the actor Hugh Grant’s father had tried unsuccessfully for years to get his cat to wave back to him.

So Dad was working on getting Brendan, our Irish setter, and Cax, our golden lab, who sat across from him on the floor, to wave to him.

Again, Dad waved vigorously. No response.

“Uh, Dad, you did notice the words in the article ‘tried unsuccessfully for years,’ didn’t you?”

“Yes, but come on! He was working with his cat! I’m training dogs! Everybody knows dogs are smarter!”

Well, the cat in the article was evidently smart enough.

He quickly figured out that by just sitting there, he’d found a way to avoid waving until the end of time to Hugh Grant’s father.

Not a creature was stirring…except for the ones who stole our tree

Saturday, December 26th, 2009

 

By Tiber

We woke up on Christmas morning to find that not only were about half of the Christmas presents gone, but our entire tree had been stolen as well. In spite of the difficulty of breaking into this house, someone had obviously done it. We were all very depressed, until Dad, who’s seen the film, “A Christmas Story,” went over suddenly and smelled the dogs.

He then whirled around and accosted the rest of us.

“Do they have Spam breath?!?

They did, of course, It’s sort of hard to miss. Dad quickly hurried down the hall and soon, he spotted one of the missing gifts, along with a trail of pine needles. We followed along, finding more and more busted-up gift boxes along the way. And we saw that the Christmas tree had been dragged all the way down three hallways and then out the back door.

We rushed outside and there it was, sparkling in the winter sunlight, a little crooked but still standing, brightening up a formerly empty flower bed and providing food for the birds, who were excitedly pecking at the branches.

You see, once again, Dad had brought home more cases of Spam, trying to get us to spend less money on food and, once again, everyone in his family was trying to get rid of it.

Mom had stuffed hers into the gingerbread-house ornaments on the tree. My brother Duncan’s triplets – (I’ll write more about them later. Sometimes you save the best for last. This will not be one of those times) had taken some craft supplies that Grandma Noni had given them, plus what looked like toilet paper rolls and some doll parts and had built what can only be described as a Barbie rocket launcher. Late in the night, they had managed to shoot countless loaves of Spam across the length of the living room and impale them on the branches of the tree.

In my older post, “The Spam Tolls for Thee,” I wrote about how the last time Dad brought home cases of Spam, Duncan had crafted me a Spam girlfriend, declaring that she was bound to last longer than any of my real ones. Well, here she was again too, since Duncan had stuck her under the tree for me to find on Christmas morning, only to have her dragged outside when the dogs took the tree.

Of course, this only proved Duncan’s point further. She was now caught on the inside branches so the dogs weren’t able to get to her, proving once again that she’s still lasting longer than any of my real girlfriends.

The whole thing was a sight but, as it turned out, Dad decided that he loved the tree disappearing and then being found again outside, feeding the birds and reanimating the flower bed. He called it a Christmas miracle. Unfortunately, I think the real miracle is going to be if we can ever stop Dad from bringing home any more Spam.

The cat in the hat, the dog in the shades

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

By Tiber

Our golden lab, Cax, got conjunctivitis and had to have some eye drops put in for awhile. Dad worried about him and when they were going out for a walk, as a joke, he put a pair of old sunglasses on him “to cut out the glare.”

He figured Cax would buck them off in under five seconds but it turns out the opposite has occurred.  Cax liked them so much that now he won’t go out without them.

It’s like living with three-quarters of the Blues Brothers. Four legs but only one head.

The other day, Dad wanted to take Cax for his follow-up appointment with the vet and woe to the world, Cax’s sunglasses couldn’t be found.

We all tried to fit him up with anything else we could find – a baseball cap, a plastic tiara, a hoodie. We even tried somebody else’s sunglasses. But no. Evidently, Cax thinks sunglasses are like toothbrushes. He has to have his own.

So everybody was dispatched all over the house to locate his glasses. Finally, they were found behind our Irish setter, Brendan’s, water bowl.  There’s no denying that Brendan hid them there. And who can blame him?

As everyone was solicitously adjusting Cax’s shades to his ever more demanding perfect angle, Paracelsus, the cat, walked by. Brendan barked at him but Paracelsus just took one look at Cax’s so undog-like diva preening, sat down a few inches away from both of them and took a bath.

Brendan flopped down and literally put his paws over his face. You could actually see him thinking with dismay,

“All of my work. Destroyed.”