A dog's life

I was hiking this summer in the woods and I got off the trail to take a closer look at a bird. On the way back, I stepped in something slippery that didn't smell too good.

"Boy," I thought to myself, "wouldn't it be nice to have a dog all the time?" as I washed my shoes off in the creek.

So last week we bit the bullet and got a dog. The kids had been asking for one, and I don't know about you, but my living room just seemed a little empty without a 40-pound mutt sitting in my good chair eating a pig's ear.

I named her Sally because on the way to get her I saw my friend, Sally, walking her two dogs. I honked my horn twice.

Her dogs jerked on their leashes and Sally, the human, I'm pretty sure, gave me the finger for honking my horn at her.

Sally is a pound puppy. She's part golden retriever, I think, and others I've shown her to think she might have some husky in her, but I'm not sure of that because she doesn't have those funky whitish-blue eyes that huskies have.

I think she's pretty much just a dog. A big dog. They said she's about five months old, but her feet are the size of dinner plates.

"She'll get about twice as big," they said with a wink as I took her out of the pound.

Sure, I thought about buying a purebred dog, but if you go for one of the fancy, popular breeds, they cost as much as a good set of tires.

Sally only cost as much as a set of good, used tires. It cost $45 to get her out of the pound, but they throw in a leash and a collar and a free bag a dog food, and you get a free vet visit and $20 off if you get her fixed, which I plan to do this week.

Even so, when all is said and done I'll have spent about $250 on an animal that farts during my favorite TV shows while chewing on my good hiking shoes.

So far she's chewed the feet off a toy horse, gnawed the head off a stuffed Santa and peed on the floor more times than my soggy feet can count (dog pee on tiled floors is very slippery). And the other day she tore open a couple of Christmas gifts and ate a bar of wax.

And, yes, we are keeping an eye on her. It's just that she's into something constantly. It's a dog thing.

The kids love her. They brush her and pet her and chase her around. She plays fetch and barks at strangers, but she doesn't bark all the time, and she sleeps all night without whining and waking everyone up.

She likes to take walks and she loves to run in the river no matter how cold it is.

As I write this, she's taken up her spot on the end of the couch. Get down, Sally, get, down.

Yeah, right, buddy. Yeah, right. This is my house now.

It's sure to be a ruff Christmas.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.