Johnny America

 

Why I Hate My Room­mate’s Pet Dog

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  1. His name (Giz­mo). He shares a hand­ful phys­i­cal traits with the world’s most-fa­mous mog­wai, but he’d nev­er have the smarts to fash­ion a crude bow and ar­row from a pen­cil and a pa­per­clip (see Grem­lins 2: the New Batch).
  2. True to his breed, this long-haired chi­huahua has very long hair. It’s split at the ends and al­ways looks dirty, even im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing a bath. If my room­mate fails to shave his haunch­es reg­u­lar­ly, clumps of fe­ces cling to him af­ter he defe­cates. Through­out the day these brown bits trail be­hind him, like Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs.
  3. He takes heart med­ica­tion. Dogs should be hearty beasts, not sissies. When he naps I hear his wheez­ing from two rooms away, and won­der whether he has asth­ma. It would not sur­prise me.
  4. He likes to guard the front door, ig­nor­ing the fact that diminu­tive size ren­ders him com­plete­ly in­ef­fec­tu­al as a sen­try. He weights eight pounds and has the bark of a crick­et. This de­tach­ment from re­al­i­ty leads me to sus­pect he’s delusional.
  5. Though his bowl is al­ways full of vit­tles that pur­port to re­al­is­ti­cal­ly sim­u­late ba­con, my room­mate’s dog’s fa­vorite snack is fe­line fe­ces. Some­times he fol­lows my pet cat to his lit­ter box and watch­es voyeuris­ti­cal­ly while he shits. When the cat leaves, he’ll dig in­to the sand and eat his truf­fle while it’s still warm. This is disgusting.
  6. Giz­mo is old and slow, and can’t al­ways scur­ry to avoid hu­man feet. I used to try to ad­just my stride so as to not step on him, but of­ten he’d move di­rect­ly un­der­foot and get tram­pled any­way. When stepped on, he makes a pa­thet­ic look that tries to con­vey his sor­row and help­less­ness. It is a piti­ful look.
  7. He piss­es on every­thing. I shake my head dis­ap­prov­ing­ly when I find him in the liv­ing room wad­ing through a shal­low lake of yel­low. He knows he’s bro­ken, so he low­ers his eyes to avoid my stare of scorn. This on­ly adds to my disdain.

Filed under Non-Fiction on March 11th, 2005

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Reader Comments

Jum wrote:

I reck­on’ ‘at old dog hates you too Jonathan. Awl bet he emen hates ’em­self fer havin’ a name like Giz­mo. On­ly thing he looks for­ward to is a warm pile o’ pussy dung.
Least you kin look for­ward to the day your room­mate come home to find that aw­ful mop dead­der than a ding dong, cause unknown…

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