Art Credit: http://www.wordseye.com/view-picture/30973
Recently it came to pass that my parents had to get rid of their dog. Guess who had to... procure the dog. Yup. Me. My mom was in the hospital and it was decided that the dog wasn't good for the household. I agreed, but here's the thing. My parents loved this dog. He was a weird dog, too. He'd get all ramped up and out of his mind excited when I would come over, but he wouldn't come anywhere near me. And he was a bit of a menace. He wrecked the place on a regular basis. So, yeah, the dog had to go. So when my sister and I got to my parents' house, she was like, "Well...? Go get him." Now, this doesn't seem so bad, but there is a particular reason this kind of bothered me. I'll get to that momentarily. I go in, my dad knows what's up, and I'm like, "Ok. I'm here for the dog." My dad was all down and , "Goodbye, Peck (he called him Lil' Peckerhead). I hate to seem him go." I gathered up all his stuff and took him out to my sister, feeling awful. I told my sister, "I feel like I just took an old man's dog. Which is exactly what I just did." She told me to get over it. Nice pep talk. Anywhoozle, here's why the situation bothered me so much.
I kind of have a history of being the one responsible for getting rid of pets. A few of the hits are:
Pissy Missy: This was a cat we had when the kids were little. One day PM layed up on my then wife's chest, looked her right in the eyes and the proceeded to piss right on my then wife's chest. Thus she made her departure. I was charged with relocating her to another neighborhood.
Jeff Gordon: My parents' previous dog. He got very old and was slowly dying from kidney failure. I took him to the very for his final day with my dad. He left before the thing. I stayed with Jeff through the whole thing. Absolutely heart breaking.
Labretard: I brought this one on myself. This dog shows up at my work. Seems like a pretty chill dog. I took him home. This dog was not chill AT ALL. He would chew EVERYTHING. I had him on a 30 foot lead outside and removed anything chewable from his 30 foot radius. HE STILL FOUND SHIT TO CHEW UP!!! I took him to the paintball field a few times. One time I was alone. He was in the back seat. We're almost home and he starts barking right into the side of my head, scaring the absolute shit out of me. Figured he needed to pee. Took him out and, NOPE. Got back in and about a half mile later he starts up again. What the hell? Another day, it was me and my son. We had him in the bed of a pickup. A man, his boy, his dog, and a truck. How Rockwellian. We stopped at McDonalds on the way. When we got to the window to pay, Labretard tries to jump from the bed into the cashier's window. He failed and ate shit, doggy faceplanting right there int the drivethru lane. He ran of and I was like, "Fuck 'im." I was about to abandon this dog. Marc talked me into making a pass around the building to at least attempt to find him. We come back around and find this stupid ass-hound just standing in the middle of the drivethru lane like a dipshit just blocking traffic. I scoop him up and then we're off to the paintball field. I used to work at the field (Paintball FiXX if anyone is asking) and we had a group come in. I had Labretard on his lead attached to the truck. I was in the shop when I heard a child shrieking, "DOG! DOG! DOG! DOG! DOOOOOOOOG!" These weren't shrieks of joy. I thought my dog was eating a kid. No, he just wanted to play with the kid and the kid was apparently terrified of dogs. But I place responsibility for that situation squarely on that kid. If he had walked 30 feet in any direction, he would've been out of reach of the dog. Instead he decided to flail his arms and spin in little circles right in front of the dog. That's Darwin at work right there, baby. Anyhow, the last straw was when he found the TV cable under the house. At the time we lived in a pier and beam house that was about three feet off the ground. So, pretty much all of our utilities were exposed. Coaxial cable must have been like Twizzlers to him. Soon after was the Fourth of July. He was freaked out by the fireworks, so when I let him off his leash to play, he bolted and never came back. That's the official story, anyway. wink. It's about a week after Labretard's departure.I'm outside. I can hear the toilet flush, as I am outside the bathroom wall, and then a big SPLASH. The dog had at some point climbed on top of the pipe that connects the toilet to the sewer, busted the pipe's support straps and detached the pipe from the toilet. Yep, one last big, wet, stinky, messy fuck you from ol' Labretard. That piece of shit.