Leave The Old Man Alone

Much to my surprise our geriatric, smelly, old, stinky, and getting-older-by-the-day dog Cosmo is surviving the winter. He sleeps most of the time, doesn't play with toys very much any more and is mostly deaf and blind, but he is still eating normal dog food, drinking and, judging by the appearance of our deck, making it outside to crap. Most of the time anyway.

Zoe loves Cosmo, and considers him her own personal playmate when she is acting like a dog. Fortunately, Cosmo still has a lot of patience and manages to avoid her by jogging around the house at a steady pace while she chases after him on her hands and knees, panting and barking. Occasionally she'll try to surprise him by leaping out from behind the couch and grabbing onto his back, or will try to hold onto him as he attempts to escape her insanity. This, I am sure, will eventually piss him off. But instead of him being able to say: "What the fuck is wrong with you? I am deaf. I am blind. I am old. I don't like surprises. I just want to give you a mint, take a nap and then go to bed. Get away from me!" he'll have to get his point across by biting her.

In an attempt to avoid this situation, she has been told by me no fewer than 297 times to "leave the dog alone." Yesterday was no different and, for extra emphasis, Doug told her, "Listen to your mom and leave the dog alone." While I am accustomed to her not doing what I say, she normally always listens to dad because if she doesn't, the repercussions are not pretty.

Maybe it's that her short-term memory was malfunctioning even more than usual, but within one minute after her chat with dad, she came within two inches of body slamming the dog. Sure enough, this resulted in angry dad, a swat on the butt and a few minutes of sitting on the stupidly-named "naughty step."

After the tears came to a halt and the snot was wiped up we explained, for the 298th time, that the dog is really, really old and can't hear or see very well. He doesn't like to be grabbed, poked, shoved, or body-slammed, and he definitely doesn't like surprises. She finally seemed to understand and, after apologizing, went to her room to play with Mr. Potato Head. Thinking it was a perfect time to start dinner since she was upstairs and wouldn't be crawling through the kitchen, I was a little frustrated when she reappeared less than three minutes later:

Now I know why she didn't listen to Doug the first time: she didn't have her ears on.