Gerret Swirled

Okay, I'm not gonna lie to y'all. Yes, I spent some time in the county lockup. I ain't proud of it, but I ain't gonna pretend it didn't happen. Why? If you read the files it says I was caught wandering down the highway without a license. You can believe that if you want. I got nuttin' to say on the subject. That was then. This is now.

Stump and Tweet showed up and bailed me out back around Christmas. They cool. So here I am. Everyone asks, "What are you, anyway?" like it's any of their beeswax. I'm one hundred percent dog. Deal with it. When you're in the slammer the fact that you're a registered purebred TerrShepPitBaDoodle... well, let's just say you don't brag about it.

What else is there to tell you. I'm about eight years old in dog years. The brain trust around here has decided that I was born on the 4th of July. Whatever. It was supposedly a famous date for something, but from now on, it's gonna be the day the Gerret was born. Just remember to send presents.

So Chigger warned me that this day was coming. She said, "If you are ever in the car and it crosses the river and turns left, then you might as well kiss your butt good-bye." And sure enough, like a regular fool today I hopped right in the car and away we went. Across the river and left. And there it was. The dog hospital.

Well, they put me up on a cold table and they poked and prodded and looked in my mouth and my ears and offered me some of the worst-tasting treats I've yet to come across. (Apparently they're supposed to be healthy, but if they're healthy, how can they call them treats?)

But I soon learned that everything up until that point was just a ruse; all the sweet talk, the petting, the complements.

Yep. Just when they've got me to thinking that maybe Chigger was making a mountain out of a molehill, this woman snuck up and stuck me with about a 3-inch long needle (I mean I'm a tough guy but that's about two feet in dog inches) that set me to howling and barking and sitting and standing and rolling over and jumping through hoops all at once. Dang that hurt.

And little did I know that we hadn't even gotten to the "kiss your butt good-bye" part yet. And no, I don't want to talk about it. And oh yeah, I give those stupid doctor dog treats one gerret.

Doctor Dog Treats:

Fo shizzle my nizzle, that Michael Felps dude don't have a clue what to do when he gets near a swimming pool in the summer time. You don't see The Gerret thrashing through the water, am I right? Ain't a gold medal in the world that tastes as good as some left over hamburger from the ol' barbecue grill. There'll be time enough for swimming after I'm too old to seriously scavenge the paper plates. When folks invites The Gerret over for a pool party, they expects no less. Piece out.

Okay, so we got this new rooster named Wooster (or Worcester?) hanging around. He's still just a kid, and so young you'd have to get real up-close-and-personal to actually determine for yourself if he was a guy or a girl. But for some reason he's soooo important. You know how I know? Because he comes with his very own admonition. It goes something like this, "Ger-RET! Stop chasing the rooster!" There's often a couple of other words in front of "Gerret" that are repeated in front of "rooster" and that seem to be references to some human belief system that can provoke cosmic retribution, but they don't translate into dog so I ignore them.

In fact, at first I ignored the entire admonition because they never said "THE Gerret" so I assumed they were talking to some other Gerret. But when I politely inquired, "Are you talking to moi?" the answer was most demonstratively in the affirmative.

So that's where it stands right now. I chase, they admonish, Wooster (or Worcester?) runs like a chicken. I'm thinking that if I hold out they'll change their minds, because hey, it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, right? Which segues nicely into the real theme of my post. The Gerret is officially post-puppytude! I'm now the old dog that doesn't have to learn new tricks! It's been pretty much seven dog years ago that Stump and Tweet came to the county lock-up, posted my bail and sprung me from the joint. (Yes, "Roscoe" was my prison name, but I was nobody's bitch. And I'll be getting to that "German Shepherd/Spaniel mix" stuff soon.)

And there ain't no way they're takin' me back. Now I got a warm place to sleep and one square a day. So who knows, maybe The Gerret will learn not to chase roosters. Just maybe. Cause I like it here. (But then I also like chickens. Fried chickens, barbeque chickens, roasted chickens, broiled chickens, boiled chickens, broasted chickens, original recipe chickens, stir-fried chicken, popcorn chickens, chicken tartar, chicken sushi, chicken nuggets, chicken casserole, chicken salad, chicken-fried steak and all those various wild animals that taste like chicken. Chicken aspic, not so much.)

The Gerret hasn't been writing much lately. I been going through one of those existential dark-night-a-the-soul things. Been listening to a lot of Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, Snoopy et al. on audio books. Not much help. With the exception of Snoopy they all seem more concerned with human existence, and we all know how that turns out.

I was thinking it might be my mid-life crisis, but Chigger just snorted and said, "Keep going on like that and it'll be an end-of-life crisis for your sorry butt. It ain't a mid-life crisis you little turd, it's about a sixteenth-of-a-life crisis and that don't count for nothing." Then she farted one of those really bad old-dog farts. Gross.

So okay, maybe I'm just having some teen angst. Or maybe it's heartworms. But hey, at least I used to get just a little respect around here.

I mean look at The Gerret in that photo at the top - happy, relaxed and way cooler than doofus Maggie sitting next to me. That was last summer, when I pwn'd Maggie and she was basically my size. I ran, she followed. I barked, she cowered. I barfed, she licked it up.

Now look at this picture from just recently. It's like the doofus has been on DGH or something. It's a freak show. It's just not natural how big she is.

[Maggie: "To paraphrase Norman Desmond, 'I AM big. It's The Gerret that got small.'"]

How can I tolerate this humiliation? She eats my lunch. She drinks my milkshake. She knocks me over in front of guests. (And she still licks up my barf.) I even heard Chigger refer to us "Kip and Lafawndah" the other day.

Kip and LaFawndah! I mean when did Chigger ever sit through Napoleon Dynamite? She's like 86 in dog years. She's blind in one eye, she don't hear so good and she let's those terrible old-dog farts. And she's disrespecting me with Napoleon Dynamite references? Next thing you know she'll be writing "all your base are belong to us" in the mashed potatoes. Sheesh.

To be continued

So just when you think The Gerret is never coming back, well here I am! Chillin' in my Christmas crib, celebrating the end of my 14th dog year in residence and marking the close of the second human year of this, my carelessly casual but occasionally compelling blog.

So for your collective Christmas creature comfort I've crafted a customized and comprehensively creative cinematic experience containing a congregation of local characters. I call it: "A Corny Copious Collection of Christmas Clips."

Oh, BTW, it snowed here yesterday. Not a common calamity.

Just read that the label "free range" doesn't mean what you might think. Whatever. Around here it means chickens go where they want when they want and there are certain restrictions on dogs following them at high speeds. The Gerret considers this unnecessary regulation. I'm arguing that we replace "free range" with "affordable range" just as a way to reduce the deficit around here.

But I ramble.

In case you weren't aware (I'm talking to you, Maggie), there's a universe out there bigger than Frog Pond Farm. It's called Alamance County. It's HUGE! And they have something called a humane society, which sounds like it's about humans, but it's really about animals and the people they care for.

Around here we rely on the Humane Society of Alamance County to keep track of the passage of time, and in order to meet that responsibility they issue a calendar every year. And that calendar features 12 of the hottest adopted/rescued animals in all of Alamance County. Why 12? I dunno. Ask them.

Anyway, this year we entered yours truly, The Gerret, in the contest to appear in the 2011 HSAC calendar. And then, as an afterthought and in order to avoid lots of jealousy and bitterness, we also entered Maggie, Slippers and Sophie. Personally, I look at me, I look at them, I look at me, I look at them, I look at me... and well let's just say I was pretty confident.

But this probably wouldn't be worth writing about if it just turned out that The Gerret got what he deserved.

When the announcement arrived we learned that the HSAC had selected Sophie - SOPHIE - (heck we call her "Soapie") to appear in their la-de-da calendar. I'm stunned.

I can't believe that Sophie would be the choice in a popular election. And so I turn to you, the citizens of the world. Please vote on which of the four of us you would have included in the calendar. To cast your vote, write the name of your first choice [in order below: THE GERRET, Maggie, Slippers, sophie] on a dollar bill and mail it to P.O. Box 68, 27340. Don't worry. I'll get it. And I can count.