I’ve had Fakename’s Animal Planet, which I admit has kind of flagged, but I’m now starting a new series. Funny stories. I am so stressed out right now, that I have to reach deep to find humor. But it’s there.
So first funny story is about my Rottweiler Hansel.
Rottweilers are challenging dogs to own. They are mostly very serene, no doubt from the knowledge that they are bigger than most other animals they encounter (dogs, cats, humans). Their standard modus operandi is: bark and look intimidating. If that doesn’t work, they sort of go to Plan B: You back down, or I will kill you. Okay then.
I got Hansel as a fuzzy five-week old puppy, who quickly grew into a dog about two years later who would finally pay any attention to what I said. But during puppyhood and adolesence, he never did any of the puppy things you fear. He was housebroken at three months old. He was unbelievably smart. He could grasp any command within ten minutes of concentrated training. He never chewed up anything. No shoes. Nothing.
When Hansel was 8 months old, we moved from Virginia, where he was born, to Florida, where we initially lived with my friends Mark and Dick.
Dick worked for Carnival Cruise Lines, in Guest Services. (Essentially, the complaint line.) It was a Monday through Friday job, because the complaints and emergencies occurred before the ships sailed. On weekends, it was a done deal. The complaints would resume once the ships returned. Nevertheless, just in case, Dick’s boss had a pager the phones were forwarded to on weekends. And there was a second pager assigned to the employees; that duty rotated.
On the weekend in question, it was Dick’s turn to have the emergency pager. We went out to dinner and he forgot to bring it with him. As we were eating, he remembered that he left it on the kitchen counter.
When we arrived home, the pager was in about a hundred pieces on the kitchen floor. With Hansel standing over it, looking very proud of himself. The thing was, the kitchen counter was about even with Hansel’s face.
We speculated that what had happened was that the pager went off, which made it make noise and skitter across the counter while it vibrated. Which annoyed Hansel. So he killed it.
So Dick called his boss and told her what had happened (“the dog ate my pager”) and drove to her house to get HER pager so she would not have to answer any calls herself. On Monday, he took the shreds of his pager to work, to prove he wasn’t kidding.
Meanwhile, Hansel was home free. Seriously, he was so proud of himself. He had protected his home territory from a buzzing, unknown danger…his work was done. I offered to pay for the pager, but neither Dick nor his boss would accept. Good dog, they said.
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