My Dog is a Pre-Vert

I think it would be safe to say that everyone has a few quirks. Eric likes to dice his meal into thousands of bite-sized morsels before he eats. Everything he eats. He claims it's a reaction to the MRE's he was forced to eat in the Marines. I tend to get a little "passionate" about things -- movies, books, new hobbies like running. I call it "being driven," Eric calls it obsession. PO-TAY-TOH PO-TAH-TOH.

We have are owned by three large and quirky dogs. On most days, they blend into our household like furniture in a pile of dog hair. We have three dogs because neither of us can simply say no to a sad, needy face. It's like a home for wayward dogs here, except the inmates are running things. We have agreed, on many occasions, that three dogs is just too much. But we're not about to tell them that. They outnumber us.

Our boy Baron likes shoes. When he was much younger, he used to chew them to pieces. I still remember that fantastic pair of black mules I bought and he ate before I could even wear them (lesson learned). It was the last time I ever spent more than $30 on a pair of shoes without laces. Now, however, he is simply satisfied with cozying up with a shoe while he sleeps. My shoes, to be exact. To Baron, nothing compares to a mary jane in the "woobie" category. As long as there are no tell-tale tooth marks, and I don't have to hunt to hard for my zappatos, then I am happy to oblige his strange quirk. No so much with my underwear. I believe we finally came to an understanding about that.


One day late last fall, I stumbled out to the kitchen after a night of feeding the baby every two hours. I hadn't had a cup of java yet, so my mind was not working at its prime. You can imagine my alarm, then, when I looked out my kitchen window and saw this:


Stalkerish, no? We moved our pool table out to the patio earlier that year, and Baron found his way on top of it.


Say what you will about pit bulls. But I know their dirty little secret; they are bordering on the edge of a full-blown Lifetime movie plot. At least our boy is.