CSotD: Littermates
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Dog Eat Doug is at its best when it offers up a small slice of semi-realistic kid-and-dog solidarity.
Don't get me wrong: I like it all the time. But these moments rise above.
When I was growing up, we had this Rube Goldberg-style wooden highchair that, if you swapped it around this way and that, would become a low chair with a table attached. I remember very few times it was ever in that configuration. It was probably less of a hassle simply to plunk the kid down at the kitchen table than to go through all the switching and swapping.
But when my little brother, then my little sisters in turn, were babies, our cocker spaniel took up permanent residence on the platform-that-could-be-a-table under the high chair. And while she was able to catch all the spills and drops from there, there was also a goodly amount of food being distributed by small people leaning over and reaching down with it.
The greatest match in this unspoken partnering came when my brother was little, because, like Doug and Sophie in the cartoon, they were puppies together.
No cocker spaniel has ever won a Nobel Prize in anything, but, by the time the little girls came along, Buttons was old enough that there was a bit of self-awareness and conscious conniving in her presence.
With Tony, however, neither one of them had much of a clue of how things were supposed to work and so they just flailed along and worked things out as best they could.
If our parents ever thought either one of them was behaving in a way peculiar enough to create concern, they had the good sense to stifle the urge to call in the vet or the pediatrician. Buttons was their first dog, but Tony was their fourth child and, by then, they had learned the important parenting technique of just shaking your head and walking away.
And if you hear giggling under the coffeetable, don't look. Just hope the rubber bone is spending most of its time in the dog's mouth.
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