Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Woof.


If my 8 years in Coney Island Veterinary School (go Whitefish!) have taught me anything, it’s that the size of a dog directly corresponds to its intelligence. The smaller the dog, the smarter it generally is. Hence the constant barking that small dogs are known for. They have more on their minds you see, and clearly feel a need to vocalize these issues: thermodynamics, currency exchange rates, string theory, and the earth’s gravitational pull on the moon. Stuff like that. Then you work your way up the scale to a larger dog, (say, an 80 pound Samoyed) who will typically bark once a day, and when he does, it’s usually to vocalize something along the lines of: “I’m not sure if I’m hungry or if I need a walk, but if you pet me, I'll forget about both for the next 10 minutes. Now put me outside so I can go play with that skunk again--I think she’s starting to warm up to me.” That’s my Cosmo—who currently resides at the parent’s house. For the record, being “Seinfeld” fans, we named him well before the Michael Richards comedy club video came out. As much as I’d absolutely love to be accused of possessing a racist dog...

Why do I bring all of this up? Well I’m currently an apartment renter. And being a man, I want a dog. Problem is, most apartments only allow tenants to have dogs that are small enough to be drop-kicked. I can understand this since puntable dogs would be of great value in our building’s monthly 1st floor/2nd floor iron-man football matchups, but I just can’t accept the fact that the only dog I’m allowed to possess is of the yapping miniature variety. Feel free to leave suggestions for all non-reptilian alternatives to dogs in the comments section below.