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The Idiot Dog – an update (and mostly cause I love dogs)

Last night we went to walk the Winterhaven Festival of Lights.  It’s a local thing where an entire neighborhood decorates their houses for the holidays.  There are contests and awards and literally thousands of people come out every year for two weeks around Christmas.   There are light and music displays and a gazillion horse and mule drawn wagons and a few lovely carriages drawn by gorgeous prancing horses.  It’s usually brisk, cool weather if not really cold and we get to feel a little like Christmas dressed in mittens and hats.

We took The Idiot Dog with us because it always seems like a good idea at the time.  We’ve always taken the dogs.  This

The Idiot Dog

year I was amused that so many people approached me to exclaim at Roscoe’s size. 

“Oh my God, your dog is huge!” they’d exclaim as they stroked his long, silky ears and I’d look at them in bewilderment.  Roscoe is a young coonhound/bloodhound mix at not quite three years old, and by that I mean he is tallish but he is still youthfully trim.  His legs look less stilty than they did last year, but he has by no means filled out yet.  He looks a lot like a teenager.  So I peer down at this admittedly tallish dog, he comes up to about the top of my thigh/hip area but then I’m not a tall woman at 5’4″, and I think, “Hmmmmm.”

Now here is why I become bewildered by people’s astonishment.  I’ve always been a fan of big dog.  BIG DOGS.  When

Shirley

 My Honey and I started dating I had three dogs: a Sheppard husky mix named Shirley, a great dane/rottweiler/St. Bernard mix named Hugh, and a pure bred Newfoundland named Sophie.  They registered in a combined weight of 390 pounds. 

Silly Hugh

Obviously I had no fear of living alone.  A person would have to be a complete idiot to burst into my house uninvited.  I also had a completely insane gargoyle of a cat but that’s another story altogether.

There were several years we took Sophie or Hugh or both to the Winterhaven festival of lights and, understandably when seeing 180 pounds of black Newfoundland in the dark, I heard more than once, “Holy crap, she has a bear on a leash!” 

Admittedly my perspective of big dogs is slightly skewed, but I just don’t see Roscoe as a big dog.

Sweet Sophie - no one could melt on a tile floor like Sophie

Here’s another thing.  Just to add to the inventory of nonsense about this dog – he’s terrified of horses.  And trolleys.  When the carriages or hay rides would come by he would literally hide behind my or My Honey’s legs, turn his face away from the street, and tremble pitifully in fear.  At one point, he ran and hid in a hedge until the horses passed by.

It would be sad if, at the same time, I didn’t think it was so funny.

Really, I’m not a nice person.

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