Feb 4

Feb 4 Jon Dawson: When your dog eats scissors...

Jon Dawson’s dog Lucille enjoys a tasty pair of scissors. / Photo by Jon Dawson

I love my dog. Her name is Lucille. She's part black lab, part goat.

Lucille lives outside. She has a bed under our carport that is umbrellaed by two massive heat lamps. Beside her bed are bowls for water and Alpo, but she prefers table scraps. Every night around 5:30 she walks up to the porch door and lets out a uniquely-toned yelp, indicating it's time to make with some people food. Tonight she had sweet potato skins, broccoli stumps, and some leftover chicken. CLICK HERE for video of Lucille shucking and eating an ear of corn.

At night when everyone has stopped scurrying around, Lucille and I love to go for a walk. She periodically gets distracted and proceeds to dig up several acres of farmland in pursuit of some varmint. She chases birds and rabbits day and night - and occasionally catches them. I can't tell you how many crime scenes our sweet dog has generated.

My friend Ralph has a black lab named Claire who spends most of its time in the house. Everybody's different, but I love to make fun of the fact that Ralph treats his dog as if it were a person. I keep telling him Claire doesn't actually enjoy wearing sports jerseys or sharing toothbrushes, but he's set in his ways.

Ralph was nice enough to invite me to his Superbowl party but sadly I couldn't attend. Still, I wanted to contribute so I brought over a cooler of ice. When I walked in Ralph was standing in his living room, arguing with his vacuum cleaner. The vacuum Ralph was cursing all the way to Florida and back was specifically designed to target dog hair.

When I was a kid we had a blue Electrolux four-wheel vacuum that weighed roughly 75 pounds. There was more metal in that powder blue tube than in any vehicle on the market today. Enough heat would shoot out the back of that thing to melt a bucket of hammers. It was also loud enough to drown out a train derailment.

Ralph's vacuum was very complicated. It had several detachable parts and more technical aspects than the first Space Shuttle. If it were mine I'd need to go back to college just to acquire enough know-how to turn it on. I'd be scared to even plug it in as I'd probably hit the wrong button and accidentally launch a missile out of a silo in Nebraska.

I suggested Ralph grab a wire clothes hanger and use it to dislodge whatever was clogging the vacuum. I held the vacuum over a trash can while Ralph pulled over a dozen massive wads of dog hair out of it. After the fourth pound was extracted, I floated the idea that he had enough to create a second dog. During the entire ordeal, Ralph's dog Claire just sipped her Perrier and showed little interest.

When I made it home, Lucille was perched at the mailbox like a furry gargoyle. As soon as she saw me she leaped around and gave me an official escort up the path to our house. I opened my car door and Lucille plopped her two front paws on me and hugged me as if I'd been locked away at Sing Sing for several years.

I then went inside my house which was thankfully devoid of adults yelling gypsy curses at vacuums jammed up with dog hair. I retrieved a dog biscuit for the fair Lucille and scratched her behind the ear until she nearly went to sleep.

Nowadays it’s tricky to make jokes about pets as so many people have been programmed to fly into a rage if the wind changes direction. It’s times like these that I miss some of the older folks who are no longer with us. Can you imagine someone who lived through The Great Depression trying to process someone getting their socks all cheesed up over a dog joke?

My dearly departed granddaddy had a great poker face when it came to telling a joke. Once a fellow farmer asked him what was he going to do with his dog Bozo who’d recently gained a little weight.