He Limits His Sweets

Lisa: One time? I met a dog that was nice and small. Usually small dogs are not as nice as big dogs but this time it was different. This dog? was nice and I liked him and he liked me so we sat on a couch. We were friends! We ate churros but he did not like cinnamon and sugar so his churro was plain. That was okay. I was wearing my sequined jeans and a heather gray shirt. See? That's me behind my friend the dog. This is at his house. That was when I was still a virgin, you can tell by my outfit (and weight).

Jesse: Most outsiders think it's the bigger breeds that run everything in the dog world but that idea is way off. Think about it. Is the president of the United States some musclebound lunkhead with arms that look like over-microwaved sausages? Who runs Studio 54? Is it Roscoe with the ankle pants and the Sequoia sized neck? No, he's the bouncer. The guys in charge are former indoor kids with underactive thyroids who have better things to do than treat their bodies like classic cars.

That's why this dog is running things in his neck of the woods, smoking a Cigarsage (cigars for dogs that actually taste like sausages, talking on the speakerphone with the manager of one of the three dealerships that he owns. This dog has it all figured out. He's loud. He's ballsy. He knows that lounging around in the nude is the true big dog's way of saying "yeah I'm so rich I can't even decide which monogrammed jogging suit to put on."

Sock Dog

Lisa: I'll be honest: I'm not entirely clear on why they're training this dog to steal that lady's sock, but I guess I don't really care. Look at him! He is a blond dog. Oh you know what? I guess he's being trained to help disabled people take their clothes off. That's very nice. I bet it's more than just a job for him, I bet he goes to bed feeling satisfied and content and wakes up excited to start another day! Honestly, this looks like such a great dog that it's probably not even about the money. I bet he just uses each paycheck to buy the necessities and then gives the rest away to charity. Or like, at Christmas, when the retarded person tries to tip him for another great year of hard work, the dog is probably like "no, no, I can't. I insist. I do this because I love it" but then the retarded person is like "NO" and stomps his foot and is like "You mean so much to me, dogfriend!" (this is how I get when people refuse my tips) and so the dog is finally like "Okay, okay" but then he goes to the supermarket and buys a Christmas Ham and lots of cookies and delicious Christmas treats with his tip money and comes back and says "What I really would like is to spend Christmas with you" and they eat together and that is the best tip of all.



If your dog just came home from a long, grueling day at his/her job sucking the soupy socks off the feet of too many awkward-shaped people wearing the color orange, you're probably staring into the depths of your refrigerator wondering why you don't tearfully end your pal's agony by means of shotgun and take the painful first step into manhood. Unfortunately, your dog is probably thinking "Yo, what's for dinner? I am always hungry." When pairing with a dog like this you're going to need something with kick and you're going to need something quick:

Eats:
Spicy Jalapeno Chicken Taquitos

Beverage:
Honkers Ale, Goose Island Brewing Company

Flavor bomb the taste of tootsies off the tongue with Taquitos and return your canine to the wilderness with earthy notes of dried peach, black tea, muddy hay and citrus peach.

This is a Tough Dog

Lisa: This is a tough cool dog, look at his face! His name is Remy and he does not like to be pet because when he was a young dog a girl pet him too hard because she loved him so much so he was like "please stop doing that" and she was like "Remy my dog!" and he was like "PLEASE STOP" and she went "but I love you so much" and he moved away because he couldn't live the way he wanted to.

Now he lives on his own and does not like when people treat him like a dog, he prefers to be respected. I respect him because he's so awesome and neat and I love him very much, he sticks his tongue out and makes puns a lot it's really funny. He has a better sense of humor than most other people.

Jesse: Keaton went through a lot coming up on the streets of St. Louis - an addiction to PetMeds, deadbeat owners who made him eat pizza boxes, six months living inside a gift basket - and now he doesn't like to be touched. So what? How is it fair that now that he's finally got his life back on track he should still have to take the "bad dog" treatment from some antibacterial swilling soccer mom after he recoils from the touch of her runtish child and its ice creamy fingers. Why is he the weirdo when you're the one stooping over to run your hands over a small animal's back? This is not a rummage sale and you are not assessing antique foot stools.

While we're on this what's up with the whole double standard where a dog who doesn't want to be pet is a prude but a dog who likes getting pet too much is desperate? Why are all magazines about dogs so intent on promoting that ghastly all ribs look that no one but a starving Romanian junkyard whelp could ever hope to maintain. Isn't the idea of a kennel kind of like leaving your child in prison while you go away on vacation? I think with a woman and a colored fellow running for office this is finally the time to sit down indian-style on some comfortable mats and approach these issues as a nation.

He Ruffs in Colors

Jesse: Ugh. Hasn't this baby boomer set done enough damage by slackening the fabric of our society into some "do what you feel!" colored Lycra without continuing to shit on us with their watered down psychedelic legacy of ad nauseum nostalgia and reunion tours and crappy artwork spackled with this god-awful "wow man, I can feel the colors" aesthetic. Being part of the generation that thinks they invented sexuality and drug use is not enough for you to coast through life on a lingering fume of bad hair and good vibes. Grow up and paint something serious. Some realistically shaded fruit or two guys in well-cut suits admiring a fancy urn. Something your parents can appreciate so they can stop having to explain to their friends that you "were one of those hippies."

Lisa: I want to press my finger on his tongue, he seems like he would like that. I want to see how it feels. There's something strange about this dog, like maybe it's a different kind of dog dressed up in a costume, or even a person pretending to be a dog but he does not look like a normal regular dog. That's okay because I like him anyway, I think he's a very nice man.

Born to Run Away with a Beware of Dog Sign In Your Mouth

Jesse: When it comes to making a convincing argument most dogs are about as effective as a protestor holding a God Hates Fags sign with two stenciled-on guys sucking face in a lake of crayon fire. They make eyes and pant and whimper but even when you can figure out what they're saying it's so not worth all the effort that you'd like to hold their noise in their ridiculous point just so they'll learn a lesson. It's like some ten-year-old kid who tries to prove he's responsible by driving to the mall for his mom's birthday present but instead ends up with a Subaru halfway through the Mandee's display window, crying his eyes out in a toppled pile of fuchsia-colored bath puffs.

Here, the dog is trying to say "I am safe, I am trustworthy, you can place your baby on the ground near me without worry." He's so fed up as being portrayed as dangerous by this damning black and red sign that he steals it and tries to run away with his problem, and while you can see the rationale behind an act like this what he doesn't realize is he's only making things worse.

Because of course anyone's first thought when they see something like this is "oh shit that dog is so dangerous he has the sign attached to his face," and even if you don't think that there's really no way to look kindly on this kind of stunt, which no dog who wasn't worth some kind of bewaring would pull. So he ends up in a six-mile-per hour chase with four sheriff's deputies on mountain bikes while your own dog is trying to use his nose to convince you that heading over to the dog run during a hailstorm is a prize-winning idea and its all so typical its like you've just finished your eighth straight episode of Law and Order.

A Very Special Houndblog

Jesse: Back when your grandparents were just kids in the Midwest seeing each other on Saturday nights they had this dog. His name was Marty and your grandfather picked him up from a local farmer with a litter of fifteen, surprising your grandmother by walking over to her place with the dog inside his hat and pretending he didn't hear its barking. They played with it nearly all day and after dinner drove into town where he ducked down in the seat so it looked like the dog was driving. It was a pretty funny sight and people talked about it for weeks.

Over time Marty did that thing where by being with a family for so long an animal surmounts its beastly qualities and absorbs these little grains of humanity, granting it a strange wisdom that you can sense whenever it sits in a rocking chair and looks you carefully in the eyes. Marty was liked this; he watched the kids while they played in the yard and came along on family vacations.

But veterinary medicine back then wasn't what it is today and by the time he was ten or so Marty's legs started to go. He'd spent so much time scampering around that it was unsettling to see him lying all folded on a pile of rags all day long and he took on this new silence, never barking when a car pulled up or someone opened the oven door, because he was so embarrassed at not being able to help out like he always had. One day in the early winter he fell down half the basement stairs and sometime after being carried up wrapped in a blanket by your grandfather limped off into the forest and never came back.

And of course you didn't know a thing about this until your grandmother's funeral when by the coffin theres this picture of him sitting on her lap at the beach, and you suddenly realize that the sheer volume of your grandparents lives was so much more than you had ever imagined. That they had secrets and shared moments and things between them that you'd never even know about let alone understand.

Your grandfather sat still with his hands clenching and unclenching on the pew in front of him and would only say that his name was Marty and he was "a good dog, a very good dog." He doesn't tell you this but every so often he has this dream where he's on the back steps of the old house and Marty comes back out of the forest just like he did so many times before. The dog comes over and rests his head in his lap for a second and the two of them walk side by side in the forest with the moonlight splashed out on the path ahead of them.

Lisa: Holy god this looks just like the kind of dog I want to be friends with!