I Must Confess

Brace yourself asshats, my evil knows no bounds.

Sleeping has become something of a struggle. Our new puppy, Delilah, has found her voice, and it's not the dainty voice of a poodle or the feminine voice of a sweet, little Pomeranian. It's the booming, I-sound-like-I-weigh-300-pounds-and-eat-lumberjacks-for-breakfast, indignant-at-only-being-offered-dry-dog-food, hear-the-roar-of-my-thousands-of-bloodhound-ancestors, cacophony that can be heard for miles around. I've never heard anything like it. She sounds like a hippo getting ass-raped.

The Duke just grins his big, goofy grin every time she gets going. He's the proud papa. I fling myself on the floor and try to wedge my fat ass under the sofa so I'm not caught in the stampede that simply has to follow a noise like that.

Fortunately, Sampson is older and wiser and set in his ways and he actually sleeps when dogs are supposed to sleep. Delilah is a lazy shit so sleeping is cool with her. But, when the Duke leaves at 6:30 a.m. to go to work, it's fun time. And fun time commences directly outside our goddamn bedroom window. At 6:30. In the morning. Our backyard is roughly a 3/4 acre, but the little assholes decide that the 4 cubic feet of space that is 2 feet from my bedroom fucking window the most enjoyable place to wrestle, growl, bark, bite, yelp and carry on.

And here's an amazing discovery: pressing your sleep crusted face against a bedroom window and screaming, "I will kill you both, kill you fucking DEAD, if you don't stop! Stop it! I'm the Dutchess! I'm a delicate fucking flower and you're ruining my sleep, you lumps of furry shit!", has absolutely no effect whatsoever. Just so you know.

So, to make a long story short, I'm tired and I'm grumpy. This is all a disclaimer for what I'm about to tell you.

Friday night, the Duke and I went to his friends engagement party. We got home rather late.

As we got out of the car, I heard the neighbors dog, Pussy. That's not her real name, but that's what I call her because that's what she is. She is an enormous Siberian husky/wolf hybrid.

She got into our yard one day and I went back in there to do something. The Duke found me an hour later, rooted to the spot in horror, pee running down my leg because I was afraid that if I moved, she would eat my goddamn face off. He walked over to her and she whimpered and dropped at his feet, licking his hand and mewling. She had been rooted to the spot, too, not because she was trying to assess whether or not she could fit my whole head in her mouth, but because she was as frightened of me as I was of her dumb ass.

This dog is the complete opposite of what she stereotypically should be. When the neighbors leave to go to Florida, which they frequently do, they leave their dogs unattended for three and four days at a time. This pisses me off for obvious reasons.

When they leave, Pussy sits in the backyard on her five foot run and makes this noise that can only be described as "an icepick in your frontal goddamn lobe". She is miserable. Friday night was the fourth or fifth time I've had to listen to it this week, and I did my very best to tolerate it in hope that she would wear herself out and shut the hell up.

At 4:13 a.m, I called the police department and they kindly informed me that the only way animal control would come out is if the dog was vicious. Would they come out the next day? No. I would have to wait until Monday, regardless of whether or not the dog was starving and abandoned.

Like fucking hell.

I woke the Duke up and demanded that he help me set Pussy free. He wearily followed me into the hallway because he knows better than to cross and angry Dutchess with a plan.

"Ok. Here's the plan. Go see if she can reach our fence. If she can, unhook her from her run. I'm sure she can jump a six foot fence."

He is in his boxer shorts and nothing else. I am in a nightgown, no bra, wearing a pair of Crocs and a feverish glint of lunacy in my eyes. Throw in a pack of Marlboro's and a motherfucking NASCAR flag flying proudly and we're every house in rural fucking Mississippi.

He dutifully went to the back and tried, in vain, to unhook her. He came back and reported that it was not possible. He hugged me, and before I could start sobbing and wiping snot all over his shoulder as I cried over the possibility of having to sleep in the tub, he went all McGyver on my ass.

He went inside, got his drill and removed a six foot portion of the fence that separates our neighbors yard from ours. Now, it was just a matter of getting close enough to set Pussy free.

The Duke was not volunteering.

"I'm not going in there. Memphis bites."

Memphis is the neighbors other dog. It is a furry, nasty, dirty mop of fur of indeterminate sex - it may have been a poodle in some former life - with beady little eyes and a lot of teeth. I did not give a shit. I went inside and put on the Duke's boots and then retrieved dog snacks from the kitchen.

So, here I am, at 4:30 in the morning, quietly making my way across my neighbors yard in a purple nightgown with work boots on, carrying a bag of goddamn dog treats. Oh dignity, where are thou?

As I got closer to Pussy, Memphis began to growl at me. When I was barely out of reach of his snapping, snarling jaws, I threw a Snausage at his goddamn head and ran like hell while he was snuffling around trying to find it in the grass.

I unhooked Pussy in record time and ran for the hole in the fence. Pussy followed me out and then immediately rolled over to expose her belly while spraying pee everywhere. I gave her the whole bag of Snausages and sang, "Born Free". The bitch howled.

We went back to bed, exhausted, at 5:30 a.m., just in time for Sampson & Delilah to begin their morning aerobics routine.

The following day, I was out in the yard with the Duke when I heard voices in the neighbors backyard.

They had been home. And we had not been quiet.

As I'm feeling spectacularly shitty, but not, about what we had done the night before, a man pulls up to their house with Pussy in the back of his truck, who was yipping and howling and pissing all over the place. How he located my neighbors is beyond me as neither dog has tags.

Oh, for fuck sake, even god's sense of humor can't be that cruel, I thought.

I stood and watched, oblivious to whether or not I was being nosy and incriminating myself in the process.

As the man offered to take the dog if they were willing to part with it, my neighbor answered, "Yeah, sure, you can have her. It's kind of a coincidence that she ran away. We were going to take her to the pound today, anyway."

Crime does not pay, children. But it makes for some interesting stories.