Okay you got me, I don't live on an actual farm.  In fact, if you take the fork in the road going Northwest when you hit Chicago, you'll find me, wallowing in grief over this outright boring offshoot of the urban sprawl that is Chicago and Milwaukee.  It's not exactly farmland.  On this particular stretch of Illinois and Wisconsin highway you'll find less than a million people.  Not exactly metropolis, and yet not exactly Smallville.  But fuuuuuccckkkk is it boring. 

Now, I truly enjoy the company of my friends and family.  But since I have been sitting at home lately looking for jobs, I have found that maybe it was not my occupation that was causing me to seriously consider that Zoloft shit.  It just might be my location.  I think if you have a heart beat any time after 10pm, they try to deport you no less than 4 states east.

However, following my normal routine of sinking slowly into remorseful acceptance, I have recently decided to look for entertainment wherever it is, at least as possible as peace in the middle east.  Also recently, I have decided that whenever I experience something entertaining, I will share it with you all in order to support my notion that my life isn't completely decaffeinated.  So, enter the first edition of anecdotes, and so too enter the dogs. I call this installment "The Dog Whisperer."

First up is my sister's 95 pound male Chocolate Lab, Churro.  What can I say,  He's Clifford: He's happy, dumb, and too damn big.  Today I was mowing the lawn.  That is an epic and tragic event for Churro, as he literally loses his shit at the first start pull.  But that isn't the astounding part.  The astounding part is that when I was about half way through mowing, he ran at me like a mad man, fear of God's wrath in his eyes, stopped, turned around, and frantically dropped a couple of hot ones right in front of the lawn mower.  I guess this was some kind of plan he conjured up to put a stop to the backyard apocalypse, but he lost his nerve mid-poop and proceeded to scramble around the yard finishing the job, spastically looking back at me to see if I was counter attacking.  Then he disappeared inside the screened-in porch.  What the hell?  

Speaking of Commando tactics, the next story involves my sister's other dog, the 85 pound female yellow lab, Dixie.  Dixie is like a cross between a teenage girl and a dog.  She doesn't listen to my sister or my brother-in-law, and she even intentionally rebels, sitting down when they tell her to come and vice versa.  I mentioned the tootsie rolls, right?  Dixie fiends on the backyard buffet like it's going out of season.  Sometimes as you let the screen door shut she'll lay down, causing the door to stop just before it latches shut.  The next time you look she's out back face deep in a pile of Churro chew.  It's gross...I know...and I can't believe it, either.

Last of all is my dog, the family pup since 1994, Sandy, the yellow lab.  She's old.  Just 4 years ago that dog was so hyper you had to wear one of those bronze diving suits just to get from your car to our front door.  Well, now she mostly sleeps and farts, and she can barely hear or stand.  But she's a happy dog and still hangs on to some of her old habits.  For example, she always has to be right on my heels whenever I am moving around doing something.  The thing is her reflexes suck now.  So if I change directions suddenly, she realizes what is happening too late and dives directly into my path, which I have usually chosen for her safety in the first place.  So of course I trip over her,  stumble forward and start to put my other foot down, right about the time that she realizes what she's done and reacts.  Then she's in the way of the other foot, the rescue boat, and I all I can do at that point is try to fall with some grace. The result is usually me trying to fall away from her and ending up in a rather precarious situation.  Once I landed with half of me on the tipped over porch table, and my face plastered on to the futon arm rest. 

Not so astounding?  Well, these events occur on a regular basis when I have the dogs for a weekend.  If this is any sign of what I will be like as an Uncle and Father, I think I'll move to Europe and become a Monk.  Just imagine what a pack of devious kids could accomplish while I'm sleeping on the couch watching Saturday football if the dogs can outwit me like this.