Getcher Pussy Off My Foot



Blu



Today I took my dog Blu to the lake behind my apartment. I’ve lived in this apartment for almost three years now, and although my place is small, it offers a great view. I have a walk up balcony on the second floor of my building, and from it you can see a spacious yard which is enclosed on 3 sides by other buildings. The fourth side of the yard ends at a fence. Just beyond the fence there’s a stream. On the other side of the stream is a path that goes around a lake. All told the lake is about 100 feet from my balcony. You can hear the ducks out there in the early morning, you can see the sun glistening off of the shimmering water in the afternoon, and in the wintertime you can see families ice skating on it like a Norman Rockwell painting. For all of these reasons, I find it hard to move on to a bigger apartment.

Because the stream cuts a long jagged path through my city, the only way to get to the lake is to drive about 2 miles in a circle around my neighborhood. Because of this, I’ve never actually GONE to the lake...until last week. Usually I take Blu to a forest preserve that’s 25 miles from my place. But last weekend my car was at the mechanics, so I figured we’d FINALLY give this place a shot, and it was great. First of all, there was nobody there but us. I don’t usually like going outside because I eventually have to interact with other human beings…and let’s be honest here, most of you are assholes. So I was pretty stoked to find no cars in the parking lot when we arrived. There were woodchip paths that took us through thick groves of beautiful trees, there were benches set up along the shoreline, and there was even a long wooden bridge with no rails that snaked through the marsh land on one side. I can’t wait to walk around this place after a fresh snow fall.

Today’s trip to Lake Pleasant ended a bit differently than last weekend however. Remember how I called you all assholes before? Well, I wasn’t the only person there this time, and society didn’t let my view of it down. Usually I listen to Howard Stern on my headphones when I take Blu to the forest preserve so I can drown out the annoying sounds of wind rustling through trees, dickheaded birds cawing at one another, and distant, muffled, selfish cries for ‘help’ that always make me feel like a pussy for not responding too. But this morning I didn’t. I can’t help but think that maybe if I did? Things would have gone down a bit differently. As it turned out, my day consisted of violating someone’s civil rights in a way I never thought I would, and an afternoon visit from the police. But that’s a story for the end of this blog.

Dogs in general have played an integral role in my development as an asshole, and today’s Lake Pleasant debacle is the impetus for the stories I’m about to unfold. I’ve had many dogs in my life, but what I’ve noticed is that most of the articles you read concerning man’s best friend tell you of the smart Golden Retriever who dialed 911 when his owner had a heart attack, or the brave Alaskan Husky that pulled a man out of a burning plane wreck, or even the fearless German Shepherd who saved a baby from a nuclear explosion. But, what about the dumb ones?

Well, I’m going to tell you about some of the exploits I’ve had as a dog owner, and as you may know from reading some of my other rants, THIS one is unlikely to be turned into a Disney movie. These aren’t stories of evil dogs who bite children, or dogs that helped the Nazi’s round up Jews, or even tales of Scooby Doo’s dickhead hillbilly cousin who wore that fucking hat, but REAL stories of the dogs in my life. Stories that tell you how, much like humans, dogs can be assholes too.



Don’t get me wrong here, I love dogs. Duh, who doesn’t right? Well, maybe Ellen…and Paris Hilton…OOH! And Mel Gibson…betcha he hates dogs. But I fucking love ‘em. I’ve had dogs my entire life, starting with a black schnauzer named ‘Pepper’ when I was a kid. Growing up, I always had the kind of dog that my mother wanted: schnauzers, poodles, Pomeranians. You’d think that with that kind of animal influence as a child, I might have grown up a little gay. Well, I DO like to look at the occasional penis, but I DON’T have a desire to touch one. Sue me.



The kid from Witness and Pepper



The sad thing was that as soon as I would really begin to bond with whatever gay dog my mother had gotten us, she’d give it away. First, there was Pepper, she was given away on my 7th birthday because we were going to move and my mother thought it would be easier to find an apartment if we didn’t have a dog. The irony of that was we were the only people without a dog in the apartment building we moved into. There was the poodle named ‘Cammie’. One day she ran away and when the animal welfare called us to say they had found her, my mother wouldn’t pay the 25 dollar fee to get her out of the kennel. We had a Rottweiler named ‘Maddie’ that my mother gave away while I was in Florida one summer because she was pregnant and mom didn’t want to deal with puppies. There was the Pomeranian named ‘Twig’ that she gave to a co-worker for no particular reason. There was Bacchus the Dachshund, given to another family while I was in school because her bark sounded weird. And finally there was mom’s last dog: a poodle named ‘Princess’. (How original)



Princess: The Gayest Dog Ever



Princess was my mother’s favorite and she was there until the bitter end. When my mother got the Cancer and had to go live in a Hospice, I kept Princess around so that I could bring her there to lift mom’s spirits. To be honest with you, at that age I didn’t really have much need of a fucking poodle. I always felt weird walking this incredibly gay dog, who wore a pink bandana around her neck, through the neighborhood. I probably didn’t help things by wearing a matching bandana and pink shorty shorts, but that’s a manly look on its own! Right? RIGHT?

Even though my mother wasn’t THAT old, the other people in the hospice were. Her roommate, Gladys was about 97 and she loved getting a visit from Princess just as much as my mother did.

One day, I took Princess to the groomers to get her that fresh clean pompous look that poodles should have. This place was the doggy equivalent of ‘Glamour Shots’ and they were the ones who got Princess accustomed to wearing that fucking pink bandana. After the groomer was sure that I would look like a complete homo with her, I brought Princess to the hospice to visit my mother. I carried her in, as I always did, so that the old people could pet her and coo at her as we walked to my mother’s room. When we got there, mom and her roommate were watching TV. I closed the door behind me and set Princess down on the floor. She immediately ran up to my mother who doted on her with love, affection, and a treat. Gladys shuffled over to where Princess was and leaned down to pet her. As she did, her glass eye fell out of her head, hit the floor with a loud ‘CLINK’, and began to roll away. Princess, thinking that the eyeball was a toy, immediately began to chase after it.

I stood there with a look of stark terror on my face. My first thought was that Gladys’ REAL eye had fallen out of her head. I didn’t know she HAD a glass eye. As the eyeball rolled towards my feet, Princess snatched it up off the ground and began prancing around the room and shaking her head back and forth like an alligator with a chicken in its maw. MY next reaction was to dry heave. I STILL thought the eyeball was real, and I had just watched a dog pick it up off the ground and play with it. This was some Hannibal Lector shit right here.

Being as old as she was, Gladys didn’t even realize that her eyeball had fallen out at first, but my mother kept calling Princess to her. This only made Princess think she was being played with, which made her run around more, while dropping the eye and chasing after it as it rolled around on the floor like a gay white soccer player. My mother, not being able to get around very well because of her condition, told me to get Gladys’s eye. “I’m not touchin’ that thing, call a nurse”. I told her wide eyed and still in shock. “It’s a GLASS eye Michael” she said, talking down to me as if I were still a child.

Fuck that, I thought. That thing was inside of a human beings skull. But I did as I was asked and gave Gladys back her eye. She didn’t even wash it off before popping it back into her head. As she came up to thank me, I could SEE drool and dog hair on that Sammy Davis Jr. eye as it stared out at me. After that event, I never put Princess on the floor in that Hospice.

After my mother passed, I vowed that I would never be put into a situation where I would lose a dog again. I gave Princess away to the groomer because I knew she would be better suited to take care of a poodle. I liked Princess, but she really wasn’t MY dog. I sold my mother’s condo and got an apartment that allowed pets. After doing research for a few months, I decided that I would get the dog that I always wanted: a Bloodhound. I found a woman in Indiana who bred this type of dog, and when a new litter was born, she invited me over to pick out the one I wanted. They were ALL so fucking cute, but one was even more adorable than the rest. Most bloodhounds are black and tan, but this one was a very unique rust color with NO black. The breeder told me that a bloodhound of this particular color is only born MAYBE once in 5 or 6 generations. She was a hundred dollars more than the rest, but she was beautiful, so I paid.

Because she was a new born when I picked her out, I had to wait several weeks before I could take her home. During that time, I thought long and hard about a name for my new companion. Because I’m a huge Elvis fan, I wanted to give her a unique name, and one that had meaning to me. I couldn’t very well name her Elvis because she was a bitch. Pricilla seemed too gay…so I decided on ‘Presley’. I bought everything I’d need for a new dog: Collar with a name tag, food and water bowls, toys, leashes, and a cage for her when I was at work. I was finally going to have a manly dog, and I wanted my first stint at LONE dog ownership to go well.



Presley



Presley was fantastic. As she grew, I started going to dog training classes with her at the park district, and eventually I paid a woman 600 bucks to train her properly for 2 weeks. I don’t know what that chick did, but when I got Presley back? She was the most well behaved dog I’d ever seen. She walked right next to me when we went out, she rarely had accidents in the house, and if a kid came up to her? She sat her ass right on the ground and let that kid pet her. Her one problem was that she was always incredibly protective of her food dish. That was a big problem.

My friend Action Jim worked as the book keeper at a restaurant and one afternoon he called to tell me that a waitress was giving away kittens. He told me that he was keeping one, and asked if I’d like one. Since Presley had always gotten along with other animals, I thought having a cat around the house to keep her company while I was at work would be a good idea. I went over to Jim’s place of business and picked up a kitten. On the way home, I stopped and got the cat food, dishes, toys, and litter box.



DIS-gusting

 I should tell you here, that I fucking hate cats. Every time I’ve helped cat owners move there’s a disgusting amount of cat hair and poop under their couches. People who OWN cats, smell like fucking cats, and don’t even TRY to own any black clothes if you have a cat because you become a fucking human lint roller. I simply got the cat so that my dog wouldn’t be lonely when I was at work.

When I got home, I set the kitty on the floor, and cautiously let Presley out of her cage, holding her by the collar as she walked up to sniff it. She seemed to like the kitten very much. She even laid down next to it and let it snuggle against her. It was so fucking sweet I thought I would become a diabetic just watching. I had left the cat food down in the car, so I ran down to grab it, leaving Presley and the kitty lying on the floor together. THAT turned out to be a huge mistake.

I was gone for all of 40 seconds, and when I came back into the apartment…there was blood and fur all over my kitchen floor. Apparently the kitten had gone sniffing around Presley’s food dish…aaaaaand Presley ate it. I totally FREAKED out. I was frightened because I thought that if a dog tasted blood, you had to put it down. I didn’t wanna put my fucking dog down, but at the same time I figured this wasn’t something I could hide! What if the next time a kid came up to her, she bit his face off? Plus I couldn’t believe that a cute ass kitten was just EATEN in my apartment! I basically FED my dog a cat! I might not LIKE cats, but shit, I didn’t get it as a Scooby snack for Presley.

I called the vet, and excitedly told him what had happened. “DO WE HAVE PUT HER DOWN?” I asked him almost in tears. There was a long pause….”Mike, calm the fuck down. Dogs have been killing cats since the dawn of time. Haven’t you ever seen ‘Tom and Jerry’? Just give her a bath, clean the blood out of her mouth, and take her for a nice long walk. She’s probably going to have to shit a kitten in a little while.”



Presley's Dad



Well, that was a relief, but I never tried to get another pet after that. Presley’s only interaction with other dogs was when I would take her out to Indiana to visit her mother, father, and siblings at the breeder’s house. The breeder had a dog run, and Presley loved visiting with her family there.

Over the 3 years that Presley lived with me, my friends came to love her as well. We would often all go out to different forest preserves with her, and she was a welcome addition to any party that I threw. She had quirks as any dog may have, but I loved her even if she drove me crazy sometimes. I think that everyone who’s owned a bloodhound will agree with me that, because of their loose skin, they can be the cutest god damned dogs to pet. However, they are also about the droolinest mother fuckers on the planet. Every time Presley would drink from her water bowl, she’d shake her head back and forth sending streams of drool flying all over my apartment and anyone in it. Although THIS happened daily, there were mishaps that were just as disgusting, but happened less frequently.

One night I locked Presley up in her cage while I went out on a date with a particularly beautiful secretary. As the evening progressed and it seemed that we were hitting it off, SHE asked me if we could go back to my place and watch a movie. First date? Back to my place? Uh, oh! Mikesgonnagetsomepussy! I didn’t eat a lot, partly for the leftovers I could bring home to Presley, and partly because I hate fucking on a full stomach. After a few more drinks, I convinced her to tell me some juicy secrets about her boss, and then we went back to my place. I turned the key in the knob, pushed open the door, and my date immediately threw up all over my back.

It seemed that Presley had a bit of the doggy diarrhea, and had sprayed shit all over her cage, all over the wall next to her cage, all over the floor around her cage, on the dust particles floating in the air, and had herself, rolled around in her mess after doing it. The smell was so terrifying, so extreme, that it made my date puke up the dinner I had just bought her. I was more offended that she just wasted my 20 dollar meal, than the fact that it was all over my back. Obviously she went home, and obviously I never heard from her again, but hell…having a dog is like having a kid, only you don’t have to pay to put it through private school…wait…I DID put her in a private school. Shit, there really is NO difference between having a kid and having a dog is there? Well, I guess there’s one…a kid would NEVER do what I’m about to tell you next.

A few nights after the diarrhea incident, while I was drying my hair after a nice long hot shower, I felt a slight tingle on my nut sack. I don’t know why, but when a woman licks your balls, it’s a better feeling than penile insertion. For a SPLIT second, my mind enjoyed that feeling, until it realized that there was no woman in my apartment. I removed the towel from my head and saw Presley looking up at me and licking her chops. She had just licked water off my scrote! AHHHHHHHHH! Much like in the situation with the kitty, I freaked out. Did this make me like one of those creepy British guys who ‘make’s love’ to their horse? I could come to grips with it if it had JUST been an accident and I quickly shooed Presley away RIGHT after she did it. But there was that SPLIT second where I enjoyed it! Sure I didn’t comprehend what was happening, but what were the philosophical repercussions of enjoyment garnered from a doggy ball lick? Like with the kitty…I once again called my vet. “Doc! Presley just licked my balls while I was coming out of the shower…and I liked it! What do I do?” I screamed at him frantically. He let out a long sigh and said “PLEASE stop calling me at home. It’s 2A.M. How did you get this number anyway?”

I told him that I was dating his secretary until she threw up on my back, but that wasn’t important right now! He hung up on me and changed his number…AND his secretary.

Presley was a great dog, but unfortunately after 3 years of being together, it was time for me to get a nicer apartment. Because my lease came up before I found another one, I ended up moving in with Action Jim while I looked. Presley went to stay with her family on the breeder’s farm while I continued my search for a nicer place for both of us.



Action Jim with ANY animal

 Unfortunately, there are some people on this planet who should NOT have pets. Action Jim is one of these people. Jim LOVES animals, but he only understands that they’re cute and cuddly…NOT that they need to eat and shit occasionally. His affection towards animals always reminded me of that Daffy Duck cartoon where the monster would give Daffy a big bear hug and say: “I will love him and pet him and squeeze him and call him George”. It’s like Jim morphs into a retard around animals.

Well, Jim still had the cat that the waitress had given to him, and when I moved into his apartment…I was stunned beyond belief. Action Jim was being VERY kind by letting me crash with him, but if I had a choice to have been anywhere else in the world, I would have. This place smelled like 30 football players who ate nothing but asparagus and Gatorade pissed over every square inch of a slaughterhouse that was dipped in bleach. You could smell it as you crept up the stairs to get to his door like something lingering behind a corner waiting to jump out and get you. The minute you came into contact with that smell, your eyes would immediately start to water and your nose would say “Fuck this” and walk off of your face.

Jim HAD a litter box, but he never trained his fucking cat to use it. Apparently, whatever instinct the cat DID have in deference towards its sand trap, was wiped out when it realized Jim would never clean the fucking thing. There was a mountain of clumpy piss cakes and turds that reached almost 3 feet. It looked like the model of ‘Devil’s Peak’ that Richard Dreyfus built in his living room in ‘Close Encounters’. You could see piss stains on everything in his apartment including the fucking curtains. There were wet spots on the counter tops, on top of his TV, the couch pillows, the kitchen table, EVERY fucking where. The smell of Jim’s apartment followed him wherever he went. And now that I was there, I could see why. The cat had pissed on his clothes, on his coat, on his socks and in his shoes. When he put his shoes on? You could hear that squishy sound like his foot was stuck in mud. It was UNbelievably disgusting. His place looked like one of those shows on Animal Planet about the ‘Hoarders’. I saw one episode where this chick had like 70 cats that just tore up everything and pissed everywhere. It got to the point where she LITERALLY just started throwing raw hamburger meat at the walls for the cats to eat. Only Jim just had ONE fucking cat. His apartment smelled like FIFTY cats living in a homeless person’s asshole. After ONE night though…the ultimate thing happened. The thing that made me screech out of there like Tony Stewart squealing his tires at the beginning of a race.

The next morning, I awoke from the LEAST pissy corner of the apartments floor that I could find to sleep on and wiped the tears from my eyes because your eyes would even water in that smell while you slept. I made a pot of coffee and turned the heat up a tad. It was winter time and it was fucking cold in that place. Jim never turned the heat up too much because it would make the apartment smell even worse. Like dead bodies boiling in a vat of urine. After a few minutes, Jim came out of his bedroom and poured himself a cup of coffee. The cat followed after him with that ‘I’m better than you’ walk that cats have. As Jim sat down at the kitchen table, I noticed that he was incredibly sweaty. His hair was soaking wet, and he had sweat drops running down his face. I asked him if he had a bad dream or something. He said no and asked me why I would ask that. I told him it was because he was all sweaty. He went to look in the mirror in the bathroom, and when he came out he said: “that’s not sweat…its piss. The cat pissed on my head. I’m gonna take a shower”.

WHAT?!?! That’s it? You’re gonna take a shower? If an animal pissed ANY where on my body, I’d make a fucking steak out it. I told him he needed to get rid of the fucking thing, or at LEAST have it fixed. He’d had it for over a year at that point and ALL he had to do was pay 25 bucks down at the animal welfare to get its nuts tied down and he wouldn’t have this problem. That was enough for me; I started sleeping in my truck after that. If a homeless person would RATHER sleep in a fucking car than in your apartment DURING the winter…shouldn’t that TELL you something?

Soon after that I moved in with my friend John who had NO pets. While I was there, the breeder ended up having her farm foreclosed upon, and she gave Presley to a nice family in Indianapolis with a big back yard. I was happy that she went someplace nice, but I was devastated that I would never see her again.

I eventually got that ‘nicer’ apartment that I was looking for, and even though they didn’t allow dogs when I moved in, I convinced my landlord to let me get one after I was there for a year. I paid my rent on time during my first lease, and he could see that I kept my place clean whenever he came over. He jacked up my rent by 20 bucks and told me to ‘go nuts’. So nuts I went.

Instead of going to a breeder, I decided to rescue a dog at the animal welfare. This wasn’t an easy decision to make because I’ve had difficulties with them in the past. I’ve always viewed the animal welfare league as a pet mafia. They call what they do ‘rescuing’ animals, but it’s more like ‘ransoming’ animals. And much like kidnap victims, if you don’t pay the ransom, they kill the fucking dog. Their ‘pet adoption’ forms are filled with more unnecessary personal questions than a REAL adoption form. Sure not all people should have fucking pets, but why do they need to know if my belly button is an innie or an outie?

And the people who work there? Forget about it. The men are usually meth heads working off a community service sentence for domestic abuse, and the women are either old hags who got kicked out of a nursing home for biting someone’s grandkids, or angst ridden teenagers wearing headphones with their iPod’s turned up so loud that their teeth have vibrated out of their heads. You wouldn’t let ONE of these people work around human fucking beings, so why do we let them work with helpless animals?

My feud with the Animal Welfare League started at around the time my mother first went into the hospital. Princess had gotten off of her leash while I was walking her and apparently had run RIGHT into the arms of a patrolling Animal Mafia truck. After looking for her for all of five minutes, I called the Animal Welfare and gave them a description of Princess. Since she snaked out of her collar, she didn’t have her name tag on. They told me that one of their animal catchers had JUST brought a dog in fitting that description, so I got in my car and headed up to get her. By the time I got there, mind you, FIFTEEN minutes had passed since Princess escaped. FIFTEEN. I approached the crotchety old lady who looked like a Far Side drawing that Gary Larson had crumpled up and tossed into a garbage can, and told her that I was there to claim my dog.

Without looking up at me, she said in a cigarette stained voice: “That’ll be 75 dollars”. I stood there for a moment thinking about that and said apologetically “oh, no no no, that must be someone else. They just brought my dog in? I’m just here to pick her up. I just called a few minutes ago? She’s a poodle named Princess?” The woman behind the counter looked up at me with her old lady glasses at the end of her nose and said condescendingly: “yeah…that’ll be 75 dollars” and then she went back to looking at the papers on the desk.

“75 dollars for what?” I inquired. “For boarding and food” she said without looking up at me. “Boarding and food? Did you give her a fucking dry aged filet minon in the 4 minutes she’s been here? C’mon lady, gimme my fucking dog.” I said half laughing.

She looked up at me again, and like a school teacher scolding a student said “Sir, you can either pay the 75 dollars and leave with your dog, or I can call the cops and you can leave with them”

Now I was pissed. “So…what you’re telling me is that you’re holding my dog for ransom? She’s been here for 7 minutes now, and you’re trying to jack me for 75 bucks? Her name’s Princess NOT Lindberg. Fuck you lady, where’s my dog?”

At ‘Fuck you’ the old woman angrily picked up the phone and started dialing the police. I stormed through the double doors leading into the kennel. I could barely hear the shouts and protests of the volunteer workers over the deafening barks of frightened dogs. I walked up and down the rows of cages, and finally came to the one with my mother’s poodle in it. Princess was curled up in a ball on the floor and she was shivering furiously. She looked like a prisoner in a Nazi death camp. I opened the cage, picked her up, and headed back out the way I came. My head was held high and my chest was puffed out as I carried this poodle with a pink bandana in the crux of my arm, DARING someone to fuck with me.

I was going to make it. I would walk out carrying my dog like Richard Gere and Debra Winger at the end of ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’. Instead I walked outside into the waiting arms of a police officer. Luckily for us, he knew my mom and sent Princess and I on our way. But I never stepped foot in that Animal Welfare League building after that.

Until the afternoon that I met Blu. Howard Stern’s wife works for the North shore Animal League. You may have seen her on Good Morning America or The View, or some other non-sencical boring morning program talking about pet adoption. Well, her arguments regarding RESCUING a dog, rather buying a puppy from a Breeder swayed me. After all, I’d done the ‘breeder’ thing; maybe it was time that I tried doing something not completely selfish. Plus, who has time OR money to train a puppy at this age? (Still 30).

I wasn’t sure quite what to expect, but I figured there was no harm in looking around the kennel. I filled out their ‘pre-screening’ forms until I felt like I just had a fucking animal enema. I spent over an hour with these forms, and then another 30 minutes taking eye exams and having my nut sack checked for polyps. THAT was just to LOOK at the fucking dogs. I hadn’t even picked one out. It felt like I was going over Paul McCartney’s FUTURE pre-nup.

A volunteer led me into the kennel. When you go into this place, ALL of your senses are immediately attacked. Your ears start bleeding from the deafening sound of wailing dogs. Your nose crumples up against your face like a beer can being smashed on your forehead, from the smell of desperation, fear, and dog shit. Your eyes begin to water because there’s so much cat dander floating around that when you leave, you end up coughing up a fur ball and licking your nut sack with one leg sticking straight up in the air. And the place reeks so bad of piss that you can FEEL it on your skin.

I made it THIS far, so I figured I may as well look around. The room looked like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It stretched on for miles in every direction and was filled with rows upon rows of discarded or unwanted pets. I understand that SOME of the dogs are there because their owners died, or were evicted. But a lot of them were there because they were abused, or their owners decided that drugs were more important than loyalty. When I think of these people I want to line them all up and give them a collective Three Stooges slap while wearing Freddy Kruger’s mitt.

Most of the dogs there were Pit Bulls or Mutts. Everyone I saw barked furiously as I went past their cage…until I came across something unusual. In one cage, there sat a dog. She wasn’t barking, she wasn’t lying down; she was just sitting there watching as I walked by. Because I did a lot of research on hound dogs before I got Presley, I could tell right away that this dog was a Blue Tick Coon Hound. Now, from what I read, this was a rare breed that was mostly bred in the South for hunting. And I could tell from looking at her that she was pure bred. I walked 40 miles back to the front desk and inquired about her.

The lady told me that this dog WAS from the south. She was raised in a Kentucky Hunting Club. Unfortunatly, what happens in these hunting clubs is that IF a dog runs away, the club has so many others that they don’t bother looking for it. This dog was caught by the Animal Welfare in Kentucky, but because of overcrowding was shipped up north to a bigger facility. That’s how she ended up there.

That was enough for me. I paid for Blu right then. Hound dogs are my favorite, and finding a rare pure bred Kentucky Coon Hound at the Animal Welfare was too much like fate. Because she needed to be fixed, I had to wait a few days before I could pick her up. While I waited, I read everything I could about Coon hounds, and got all the necessary doggy equipment.

Much like Bloodhounds, Blue Ticks are hunting dogs. However there IS a difference. A Bloodhound is called a ‘trail dog’ because they chase an animal, or an inmate, by following the trail of their smell along the ground. A Blue Tick however, is called a ‘tree dog’. They follow an animal’s scent through the air, usually raccoons, and chase it up into a tree where the hunter will shoot it down. It didn’t take long for me to learn just how proficiently Blu had been trained to do this.

When she finally came home with me, she was perfect. You could tell that she was well trained to heel, sit, and the most important one? Whenever she had to go outside, she’d sit by the door and stare at the knob. PERFECT! Her only problem was that she was a bit lax in her manners. Whenever people would come over she’d jump about 6 feet in the air. She was like a doggy Michael Jordan. I never saw a dog jump so high. Not in a mean way, mind you, but in an ‘OHMYGOD, ITS ANOTHER FUCKIN’ HUMAN BEING’ excited kind of way. However, because she weighs almost 90 pounds, this can be a bit of an annoyance.

Blue has been with me for nearly two years now, and during that time, I’ve had to adjust myself to her quirks. I’ve had to make a list of rules, like in the movie ‘Gremlins’, for owning a Blu Tick Coon hound. Rule number one? Don’t take her outside after dark.

Because I live in a mostly wooded area, there are more fucking raccoons around here than people. These little bandit mother fuckers come out after sunset and immediately set up shop in the dumpster outside my building, on top of cars in my parking lot, and I shit you not…sometimes they’ll sit on your window ledge and peer into your living room to watch TV with you. Blue can smell them in the fucking air, and goes ape shit whenever there’s one within 100 feet of her.

Soon after she first came home with me, Blu got out of her collar and began a raccoon rampage through my neighborhood. My building is at the end of a dead end street, and just across from it is a 7 foot fence that separates my street from a trucking company. JUST on the other side of this fence is a clump of tree’s that I’ve dubbed Raccoon City. You can hear the mother fuckers in those trees day and night, and often when you walk past it, they’ll throw chicken bones and soda cans down on you.

When I took Blu for a walk that night, she saw a group of Raccoons on the garbage can and started going bonkers. She pulled and yanked at the end of her leash until she managed to pop her head out of her collar. She chased the raccoons to the fence line, and JUMPED up OVER a seven foot fence. I stopped screaming for her to come back because I was so dumbfounded at what I had just seen. I couldn’t climb that fucking fence, and Blu, in one fucking leap managed to get over it and into the truck yard. I had to go all the way around the block to get into the entrance of the yard, and then I walked back to where Blu had hopped the fence. It was like a horror movie back there. It was pitch black, and as I called out for Blu, all I could see was an occasional flash of white as she ran by in the distance, JUST out of eyesight, chasing a raccoon. After about 3 hours of searching for her, I called the cops and gave them a description of her just in case they happened to see her, and went back to my apartment.

20 minutes later there was a knock on my door. It was my neighbors. They had just returned home from a White Sox game and saw Blu sniffing around the dumpster outside. When they called out for her, she immediately jumped into their car and that’s where she was at the moment. Incredible. THIS means that Blu EITHER jumped the fence to get BACK to our place, OR she walked all the way around the truck yard. Either way, she was a smart mother fucker in finding her way back.

After that, I adopted rule number two: Blu wears a harness from now on. However, this proved to be just as useless as the collar. One day, while I was bending down to pick up Blu’s shit; I felt a tug on the leash. I jumped up and saw that Blu had backed up until the leash was pulled taught, stood up on her hind legs, dislocated her shoulders, and pulled backwards until she was out of the harness. Fuckin Houdini over here.

After Blu had been with me for a while, I decide that since she was older, and well trained, perhaps I could give her the run of the apartment while I was at work instead of locking her up. I realize the importance of ‘caging’ dogs, but I don’t really like it. After all, how would you like to sit in a fucking cage for 8 hours a day? Well, after ONE day, I adopted rule 3: NEVER give Blu the run of the house.

When I came home from work, I put my key in the door and turned the knob…the door wouldn’t open. There was something blocking it on the other side. I pushed as hard as I could, but it wouldn’t budge. I went around to my walk up balcony and came into the back door. My first thought was that I had been robbed. Everything in my living room was knocked over. My wooden book case which held my gaming systems, stereo, blu ray movies, and cable equipment was lying on the floor and wedged against the front door. My 42 inch TV and the stand it was on were knocked over and the screen was shattered. There were shards of glass, paper from torn up books, and chewed toilet paper rolls lying all over the apartment. And RIGHT in the middle of it all? There was a big fucking steamy pile of dog turd. Aaaaand that was the end of Blu’s afternoon freedoms.

As in all doggy/master relationships, Blu and I have grown quite fond of one another. Don’t get me wrong here, I know that she only loves me because I put food in her dish and take her on long walks, but that’s the same reason that any woman I’ve dated has loved me. The only difference is that Blu is way more loyal than the women I’ve gone out with. So when I took her out to Lake Pleasant behind my apartment today and someone kicked her RIGHT the fuck in front of me? Brother, it was on like the break of fucking dawn.

When we first pulled into the parking lot at Lake Pleasant this morning, I noticed that there were several cars there this time. I was hoping that nobody else had brought a dog, because Blu still gets excited around other animals. We walked down the trail that led to the lake, and I could hear a muffled voice through the trees up in the distance. As we continued walking, we followed the path around a corner where we could see the entire lake stretched out in front of us. I could see a few people walking in various directions around the lake, but NOW I could hear that voice much more clearly.

On the other side of the lake, almost directly across from us, I could see someone holding their hand up against their ear. He was talking on his cell phone, and he was talking loud. I don’t know about you, but I fucking HATE people who talk on that phone as if the rest of the world wants to hear one side of their conversation. Even though he was on the other side of the lake, I could hear him quite clearly. He was one of these uneducated ass clowns who has the vocabulary of a 3rd grader, and because of this, every 3rd word out of his mouth is some variation of the word: fuck. “So I fuckin’ walked up to the fuckin store and this fuckin broad was fuckin hot. So I asked her if she fuckin wanted my fuckin tongue up her fuckin snatch”.

Look, I’m all about freedom of speech. And I’m old enough to know the score. There’s a plethora of assholes on this planet and you just have to deal with that. Until I become Czar of the United States and can initiate my program of mandatory I.Q. tests and marching death squads to deal with those who score below an 80, the assholes get a pass…for now.

The guy on his phone was walking south along the East side of the lake. Blu and I began walking south along the WEST side of the lake. As we continued on, it was hard to ignore this dickheads conversation. He was even more of misogynist than I am. Saying things like “Yeah, I was at this fuckin party and she was fuckin passed out, but she was fuckin askin for it before I found her in that fucking room”.

Ok, now he was basically saying that he raped some chick. He had to be joking with whoever he was talking to, right? Blu and I continued along the path and as we rounded a cluster of trees, we came upon a man hurrying along in the opposite direction with his 2 little girls. You didn’t have to be a genius to see that he was getting his girls the fuck out there because of this guy on his phone. Usually, I don’t give a fuck about kids, they’re YOUR problem, but in this instance I actually felt embarrassed for them. I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck begin to stand up.

The guy on the other side of the lake had stopped and sat down on a bench. “Yeah, I fuckin had too. Who the fuck did he fuckin think he fuckin was?”

I came to the end of the lake and began to round it to the East side. This is where the marsh land is. There’s a long wooden bridge with no rails that snakes through a bunch of chest high weeds growing out of the water. It’s pretty fucking cool actually. As I got about halfway across the bridge, two nuns came walking from around the corner. I couldn’t see them before because of the tall weeds, but they were talking to one another and trying hard to ignore the asshole, which you could STILL here talking on his phone. I nodded my head to them and said good morning. They looked at me with pained expressions of shame on their faces and said ‘good morning’. In the distance: “Fuck that fucking cunt. I fuckin told her cunty fuck of a fuck to fuckin suck my fuckin cock”.

Look, I’m an atheist. But just because I don’t share these ladies beliefs, DON’T think that I don’t have a great deal of respect for them. They’ve chosen a tough path of piety and marriage to god. On a daily basis they devote themselves to helping others. To see that look on their face? It made my blood begin to boil.

As Blu and I came out on the other side of the marsh, we were now walking north along the East side of the lake. On this side, the path was on higher ground. There was a 4 foot drop down to a 10 foot wide embankment that ran the entire length of the lake. Along the embankment there were picnic tables and benches. The cell phone dick was now standing on the edge of the path about 200 feet ahead of us. Below him was that 4 foot drop. I could now see that he was waving his arms and making gregarious gestures as he was completely involved in his conversation. “My mom doesn’t know WHERE the fuck I fucking am let her fucking worry about me. Fuck her fuckin ass”

Blu and I kept walking towards him. I looked out over the lake and saw the nuns coming out of the marsh going north towards the parking lot. I could see the guy with his two girls coming towards the end of the lake to the path that would lead them to their car. ”fuck that fuckin bitch fuck”

As we approached numb nuts, I could see now that he was about 25. He wore a baseball cap and he made me think of ‘The Situation’ from The Jersey Shore…I fucking HATE ‘The Situation’ from The Jersey Shore. As Blu and I walked behind him, I called out: “hey, buddy. You mind keeping it down? There are other people here that don’t wanna hear your conversation”.

He turned his head and said condescendingly “yeah, I’ll keep it down”. And then he started talking louder. “NAW, SOME FUCK JUST TOLD ME TO KEEP IT DOWN” and then he started laughing into the phone. Just then, Blu started sniffing at the ground around this guys feet. She sniffs EVERYTHING when we go out for walks, and because I was standing about 5 feet from him, she wanted to see what was doin with those shoes I suppose. I pulled the leash tight, and just as she was coming back towards me, the guy on his cell phone turned his head, looked down at Blu, and kicked his foot back into her body. “HEY, keep that fuckin dog away from me”. Like Popeye, that’s all I could stand, and I can’t stands no more.

I closed the distance between us quickly and snatched the cell phone out of his hand, and before he knew what happened, I wound back and threw it in the lake with all my strength. Because I was facing the West side of the lake, I could SEE the guy with his kids AND the nuns stop to look at this exchange. The cell phone guy turned his entire body around now. His eyes furrowed into anger and as he said “WHAT THE FU…’ I put my hand on his chest, leaned in close to him, and pushed with everything I had. His feet went up into the air and his body went prone. He landed flat on his back at the bottom of the embankment. You could HEAR the wind rush out his lungs. He lay there gasping for air. “Don’t EVER…touch a man’s dog”.

As he tried sitting up, Blu began to growl at him. In the two years Blu has lived with me, I’ve never once heard her growl at anything in anger. I pulled out my wallet and took one of my business cards out. I threw it with two fingers down on him, and said: “I can get you a good deal on a new cell phone, come see me anytime you want…bitch”. I actually had TWO reasons for giving this douchebag my business card, ONE was as a threat and the other I’ll explain to you in a minute.

As I began to walk away, I could hear a noise coming from the other side of the lake. It was the guy AND his two little girls clapping. Then I heard another sound and looked over to see the NUNS joining in. It was the first time in a LONG time that I felt proud of myself. Blu and I continued our walk back to the car. I never looked behind me to see what this guy was doing. If he came after me? Blu would let me know.

After we got home, Blu and I ate and then lie down for a nappy poo. A few hours later, there was a knock on my front door. I looked through the peep hole and saw that it was the police. I opened the door and invited them in; after all, I had nothing to hide. I offered them a cup of coffee and asked them what I could do for them. They told me that they got a complaint from a gentleman saying that I assaulted him and threw his phone into the lake. Then they asked me if I’d been to Lake Pleasant earlier in the day.

I told them that my dog and I had indeed been to the lake, but I didn’t ‘assault’ anybody. They described the asshole in question. “OH YEAH, I did see that guy. He had dropped his phone in the water, and when I saw him pulling it out dripping wet; I gave him my card because I work for a cell phone company.”

The officers looked at each other and then back to me. “We’re sorry to have bothered you Mr. Hempen, but we have to follow up on these complaints. We figured that you wouldn’t give your business card to someone you just assaulted (THERE’S the second reason) and there were two nuns from the church next to the lake who said they saw you and your dog the entire time you were up there, and you didn’t assault this gentleman in any way. His mother is actually the one who called us. He was probably just lying to get out of trouble from ruining his phone.”

“Well, that’s kind of understandable, but I’m sorry he wasted your time with this.” I told them. “Yeah, we’ll have to teach him a lesson and bring him in for filing a false report, just to scare him”

“Don’t be TOO hard on him, he’s still a kid and his mom’s probably a bitch” I said laughing. The officers laughed with me, thanked me for my time, and left.

FIRST of all…how fucking awesome is it that TWO nuns lied to the police for me? Secondly, there’s a moral to ALL of these stories. A man can put up with a LOT from his dogs, but you have to respect that THEY put up with a lot from us too. Most people are more tolerant of their pets than they are of other human beings, and that’s fine because like I said at the beginning? Most of us are assholes anyway. As much as I like violence in film, I don’t condone it in real life. Mostly because I’m a huge pussy, but also because where does it get you? I’ve always been able to TALK my way out of most fights, so bullshitting has become a second language for me. I try to think 3 steps ahead of the other guy, which is why I gave that dipshit my business card. I knew he would call the cops. Guys like that can’t help but call in backup so they don’t have to deal with their inadequacies as human beings by themselves.

As for Blu and I? Well, I hope that she’ll be with me for a few more years. If you’ve noticed from reading these stories, I’ve had a lot of dogs, but I’ve never had one die while it was in my care. I’m not looking forward to going through that with Blu, but she’s 4 now and it’s gonna happen eventually. Dogs are great though, and they’ve given me a lot of love and material to write about. Even if these aren’t the kind of stories you’re likely to find at the Westminster Dog Show, animals can inspire us in many ways. Blu inspired the title for this article earlier this morning when she jumped up on my bed and sat down at the end of my leg prompting me to say 6 words that I never thought I would ever hear strung together in a sentence: “Blu, Getcher pussy off my foot”



Blu's Pussy