If you have a male dog--and I realize that for me, the term "male dog" is a loose one; I have a male dog in name only--you know how when you walk them, they have to pee 495 times, and mark their territory, and spread their seed, and text that floozy they met on a business trip. It's just how males are.
But if you have a female dog--a womyn dog, as my mother would say; a bitch, as I would say. If you have a bitch, they don't need to pee all over yonder on walks, and they can certainly leave well enough alone when it comes to floozies on business trips.
Maybe I'm entering my bitter phase.
But lately, Tallulah has been brought to you by the letter P. She's been minding her Ps and Qs on our walks. She's outpeeing Edsel, is what she's doing. And I haven't been all that sure that...stuff is actually coming out. But she sure is doing her squats.
Also, there were puddles of dog pee in the house when I got up in the morning. I told this to Ned, who I was talking to on the phone, and shut up. "Someone peed in the house, and I know it was a dog, but not which one," I told him, and I am riveting to talk to. You can see why exes call me to see what's up.
"Was Edsel a letter C while you cleaned it?" asked Ned, who once found a whole poop explosion in the kitchen, and who watched Edsel fold into himself in sorrow while Ned cleaned. "If Edsel wasn't a C, it was Lu. And you know Lu isn't gonna feel bad about peeing on the floor."
He was right. Tallulah stood tall and proud while I cleaned that mess.
So I called the vet, and told them I wanted to get in right away. She's also chewing her foot again, (the dog, not the vet) and this is a whole DIFFERENT foot. Not that Talu ordered a foot on eBay and commenced to chewing it. I just mean a different one of her four regularly scheduled foots than the one she was chewing the LAST time I took her to the vet.
I told Tallulah I'd be going to work yesterday, but that I'd be back in an hour or so to get her, and what I love about that dog is that when I talk to her, she tilts her head, as if that will somehow help her know the pithy words of the humans.
About a block from the vet, she started shaking, and I HATE it when Lu shakes. My normally stoic dog will get right on my lap and hide her head in my hair, and shake shake shake. Shake her booty. And all the rest of her.
Naturally we got in the lobby and there was a woman with an idiot Cocker Spaniel, a small one, with a pink collar. You know how Lu is about dogs like that.
A manly black Lab, she'd have been all cool and possibly even slipping him her digits so he could text her after his business trip. A teensy taffy-colored fluffy-footed Cocker spaniel, she wasn't gonna have. It was an indignity with up she would not put.
"Grrrrrrrr," said Tallulah, showing her Pitty fangs, as if she hadn't been shaking like a little bitch 11 seconds before on the way over.
The idiot Cocker Spaniel looked confusedly at Tallulah, Out to Lunch signs in its fluffy eyes. "Let's get Tallulah back to a room right away!" sang the vet tech, who has the world's singsongiest voice and you just want to cock punch her. If we'd been dogs, she'd have been an idiot Cocker Spaniel and I'd have been showing my Pitty fangs.
Tallulah went back to Shake and Bake as soon as we were in a room. She lounged nervously under the bench I was sitting on, refusing to let me pet her. I could see her head bobbing about like she was Katherine Hepburn. I expected her to say "Spence!" any second.
But what happened instead was she peed in the room. Right on the floor. And between you and me, she'd also peed in the lobby. It's hard to look menacing when you're also doing a number one, but my girl managed it. Still. It was so unlike her.
"We'll take a urine sample from what Tallulah left on the floor!" the Cocker Spaniel vet tech screeched at me. Seriously, she's so upbeat that you have to wonder what's wrong with her.
When the vet came in, she told me Tallulah had a bad UTI, and possibly a kidney stone--we have to go back in two weeks to see if that's the case. Also, when we discussed the foot-chewing, the vet told me, "The first time she chewed, we assumed it was a granular lick thing. The second time with a different foot, we treated that again. But a third time, this is an anxiety disorder. I think Tallulah needs to be on Prozac."
So, she has a UTI, a kidney stone and an anxiety disorder. Basically, this dog is me. We're Elliott and ET, is what we are.
We went home with shit to treat her foot and her UTI, and also her new antidepressants, which are nestled next to mine on the shelf in the kitchen.
I really hope we don't cheer up enough that we stop making fun of Edsel together.
