The Lazy Gnome...

Now that Dolly is "an old woman," the vet said she is supposed to stay inside and sleep a lot. Since that is what I stereotypically spend the majority of my time doing, PIB decided that Dolly should come live with me for "a while." So, as soon as I got back from Colorado, PIB dumped Dolly at my place...something about how she is my dog and how I'm supposed to take some sort of responsibility for her. I guess it makes sense with child support laws and all (even though she is...a DOG)!

Dolly used to hate coming to visit me because the service generally sucks at my apt. I mean, Melissa and I can hardly take care of ourselves. It's already hard enough for me to remember to take my meds and make it to class on time. So, you can probably imagine how stressful it was for me to remember to feed and walk Dolly. I tried to rationalize that since I usually sleep through breakfast, Dolly could do the same and just get extra dinner. It would really piss me off every time a car would pull up because Dolly would get all excited thinking that it was PIB coming to rescue her or something. What a bitch! To teach her a lesson, Melissa and I would make her watch that animal precinct show on TV while we were out doing stuff so she could see just how bad some doggies have it.

Apparently when PIB brought Dolly over this time, however, she got all excited. I think that she now thinks of my apt as a spa of some sort. She has gotten very demanding in her old age, and I think that she knows how to manipulate me. To get me up in the morning, she starts licking her paw for like an hour. Usually I can sleep through anything, but she licks SO loud and SO consistently that it drives me nuts! There is nothing on her friggin’ paw…she just does it to spite me cuz she knows that it's annoying as hell. I let her out to pee, and, luckily, since it so hot, she doesn’t really want to be outside anyway, and does all her business really quick and doesn’t really need to go out again ‘til around dinner time.

The second I let her back in she runs over to her bowl and stares at me like I'm dumb or something. If I try to go back to bed she just barks at me, so I go ahead and pour her kibble in her bowl along with her arthritis medicine to shut her up. She used to eat her medicine with her food, but she has taught me a pretty neat trick: she knows that she has to take that stupid pill, so she eats around the pill and leaves it in the bowl. I was so pissed the first time she did it that I shoved the pill down her throat, but that just made her puke on my carpet. So, now every morning I have to wrap the friggin’ pill in cheese to get her to eat it. The other day she tried to nibble the cheese off of the pill in order to get me to put more cheese on it, but I wasn’t gonna fall for that shit, and I think she knew it. It really is annoying how she kinda expects a dessert of some sort after every meal. I try not to give in because PIB is always saying how she is on a diet, and that if she gains any more weight it is gonna cost extra to bathe her at the vet and that I would have to pay for it. I always tell Dolly, “No means no…” but she really knows how to work people. She gives you this sexy look when you’re trying to eat your food, and at first you get mad at her because she is begging, but then she just keeps staring at you as if to say, “Should you really be eating that, fatass? I won’t say anything if you give me some.” So, you end up giving her like, a third of your meal.

During the day, I usually drag her bed into the living room so she can watch TV and nap comfortably. In return, she usually doesn’t bother me for anything unless I’m in the kitchen eating something that she strongly believes I should be sharing. I think most of my friends scare her because when they come over she usually retreats back into my bedroom. When she has decided that it is time for my friends to leave, she comes back into the living room and starts going at it with her bed like mad. It’s really embarrassing, and she won’t stop until they all leave. She really doesn’t want me to have a social life unless it benefits her in some way. She knows my friends won’t feed her or feel sorry for her, so she tries to get rid of them, but when I’m sick and people come over to take care of me she really knows how to milk it…like when I got really sick and my mom would pretend to come over to take care of me, but she was really coming over to check on Dolly because she was worried that, since I was sick, I wasn’t gonna be able to meet all of Dolly’s needs. Dolly would give her this pathetic look and I would tell my mom that I was taking care of Dolly and that she has been getting to sleep in and get lots of treats and not to give her anything else, but then my mom would give her like, a second breakfast, and then Dolly would just give me this look like, “I’m better than you.”

I tried to tell PIB that Dolly treats me like her slave and how she is really controlling, but PIB tries to make clever statements like, “Dude! She’s a DOG!” I think that Dolly likes being here now because she knows she can abuse me. No one believes me. I’m starting to wonder what PIB meant when she said that Dolly will be staying with me for “a while.”