The Boss mentioned the other day that the Fur-Child might make an appearance over the holidays – he knows I like her, which is one of the reasons Queenie doesn’t. Queenie calls her “the Princess.”
You might remember that the Fur-Child belongs to the young Missus and gets city-dog treatment, with a regular dog walker, a hot pink collar and pet insurance. She also smells pretty good – she eats vegetables on account of some liver complaint, so Queenie says. Whatever it is, she smells a lot better than my Mum.
But she lives in Melbourne, north of the city, where Queenie says a lot of careless people have been having big parties, hugging each other and coughing into each others' drinks. And because the Princess has so many human attendants, like groomers, walkers, manicurists, vets and insurance assessors she is almost certain to be infected, possibly multiple times.
So Queenie reckons the Princess is a virus risk and she should stay home. I haven’t heard of dogs carrying the virus – the Chinese have been tucking into dogs for hundreds of years, as they started doing again this week at the annual Yulin dog festival, with no ill effects at all. In fact, eating dogs has fortified a few of them in wanting to take over the world.
Besides, I’m sick and tired of being under Queenie’s paw all these months. When I pointed this out, she started in on all the bad habits she thinks the Fur-Child has taught me..and there’s a long list.
Queenie reckons the Fur-Child taught me to bark whenever I want something, which is unbecoming in an obedient dog. Then, Queenie says I learned to jump on the glass doors when barking didn’t work, except that I’m bigger than the Fur-Child and can plant my big muddy paws much higher than she can. I'm not yet game enough to take her lead entirely: when she’s inside, when jumping on the windows doesn’t work, she’s smart enough to scratch the white-painted walls. All this drives the Missus crazy.
Then Queenie went on about the way the Fur-Child insists on having her sun-bed dragged out to a place to her liking, sometimes half-in and half-out of the sun. And then she struts ever-so-casually onto the Missus’s carpet (which is totally forbidden for we well-trained dogs) to lounge in front of the Boss’s fire. “A sense of entitlement,” Queenie used to snarl.
I say “used to” because Queenie seems to think, as the senior dog, that she is similarly entitled these days; I’ve seen her sneaking in front of the fire when the Missus isn’t looking.
So, I’m not the only one learning bad lessons from this hot little Siren, am I? And I'm looking forward to a spell of rough dog play, no social distancing required. Woof!
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