Okay then my dear ones, this Fri­day, June 25^th, is Take Your Dog to Work Day. The event, spon­sored by Pet Sit­ters Inter­na­tional, promises to be quite the enter­tain­ing. If you go to the web­site, you can reg­is­ter your dog, your place of work, and post pho­tos of That Spe­cial Day.

Wachter walks across the USA *google it

I don’t know what kind of dog you have, or, if indeed you have a canine at all. We have two Jack Rus­sell ter­ri­ers each clock­ing in at around 20 lbs each and a 60lb Rottweiler/​Shar Pei muttpuppy we res­cued from a nearby shel­ter last year.

Our dogs come to work with us each and every day.

It’s hard for us to divorce our­selves from dogs at any given moment of the day. Peo­ple com­ment fre­quently to us that if they die and come back as an ani­mal in the next life — they want to be a dog in our house­hold. We do not treat our dogs as humans; we treat them as dogs and expect proper dis­ci­pline and behav­ior which in turn affords any­one who comes to our home or who meets us at the Dog Park a pleas­ant canine expe­ri­ence. Roxie, Thomp­son and Linus rarely mis­be­have other than bark­ing wildly when some­one they know approaches the front porch. Saints for­bid they bark at men­ac­ing strangers or some hap­less Fuller Brush Salesman.

Thomp­son, JR#1, the reign­ing monarch of the MacE­wan King­dom, sleeps in our bed with us. No, wait. He allows us to sleep with him. I sup­pose that would be more appro­pri­ate to say. Linus, JR #2, has a won­der­ful crate/​kennel of his very own and prefers it to any other area of the house. Rox­anne, muttpuppy and self-​appointed joker of the realm, sleeps in a really large crate in the liv­ing room, next to the couch. Her crate con­tains a fluffy com­forter and a dog pil­low. If you haven’t deduced it by now — let me ‘splain it sim­ply to you — our dogs lead the Life of Riley.

Last night, the most loathed and feared of dog moments occurred while we inno­cently slept, lulled into a false sense of secu­rity by the hum of the hall­way fan. Appar­ently all three dogs ingested some­thing from the same foul source. A dead bird? Some cat offal? A few rot­ting grubs? What­ever… the noc­tur­nal phys­i­cal reac­tion of each dog equaled what I would term a Mount St. Helen’s Effect.

Thomp­son left his king-​size throne and went down­stairs to relieve him­self of the ingested mat­ter via a rec­tal explo­sion. On the couch. Roxie backed up to the side of her crate (it’s of a wire-​type con­struc­tion) and did like­wise aim­ing toward the side of the couch. She hit her tar­get square on.

Rob, my spousal unit, woke before me. I say this with much humil­ity — rarely has such a moment been appre­ci­ated more. As the first human to enter the haz­mat zone — the Fam­ily Law of Who-​Cleans-​Up applied to him. He may never be the same, it will take him a few days to recover from the clean-​up. This was clearly more than a Dawn Deter­gent Moment.

*This is not in any way to take atten­tion away from the tragic, incom­pre­hen­si­ble oil spill in the Gulf of Mex­ico or to make light of that sit­u­a­tion. Have you heard, btw, Kevin Costner’s “Ocean Ther­apy Solu­tions” is in the busi­ness news in regards to clean up?

I came down­stairs for cof­fee and a quick read of Salon on the Kin­dle and saw the liv­ing room in its post-​apocalyptic state. The front door open, propped so with a brick, all the cush­ions from the couch lined the front steps — strewn like dis­carded beer cans in the bed of a 1972 F-​150 — Roxanne’s crate dis­as­sem­bled on the front side­walk, her quilt hang­ing over the porch rail­ing, and Rob, bless his heart, in the process of lug­ging the hose around from the back of the house to spray it all down, hop­ing to clean the uphol­stery and save the day.

Let me now say, dear read­ers, the funeral ser­vice for our couch will be held Tues­day at 3 p.m.

View­ing will be Mon­day night from 5 p.m. — 7 p.m. in the front yard of the home of the deceased. the sal­va­tion army band will play “nearer my god to thee” con­tin­u­ously for 2 hours.

In lieu of flow­ers, the fam­ily requests dona­tions sent to the Waterkeeper’s Alliance.

And so, with both regret and relief, I tell you of my quest for a New Seat­ing Arrangement.

The debate top­ics thus far:

1. The Pros and Cons of Pleather because I truly do want a Bible Thump­ing Long Last­ing Couch.

2. The Pros and Cons of Real Leather because cowhide is the best hid­ing place of all.

3. Do I lis­ten to Cake as I search online for the Ital­ian Leather Sofa per­fect solu­tion? Or do I haul myself to GVe­gas to see if Bostic-​Sugg has any floor sam­ples to offer for imme­di­ate purchase?

Fur­ther elu­ci­da­tion on the mor­row, or per­haps in a fort­night, depend­ing on my mobil­ity and the heat of the day.

Fluxs​.us sign­ing out…