My name is Clayton Dean, and I have a problem: a highly efficient Grinch alarm who treats every visitor as if he caught them sneaking down the chimney to steal our Christmas tree and Who-toys. His lusty barks are accompanied by huge, Tigger-like springs into the air, seemingly so he can confront would-be offenders face-to-face and eye-to-eye. So this holiday season, if you live in Northern Virginia, you might see a half-crazed floppy-eared hound frolicking with Rudolph or even hear his thunderous bellows as he chases away the Grinch. Yes, I have a dog. His name is Trouble. No really. I’ll say that again: his name is Trouble. And over the coming months, I’ll continue to recap his adventures in this column: the Trouble with Trouble.
Ahh, the holiday season. No matter your family’s beliefs, dogs clearly know that it’s all about them.
Trouble is no exception.
Last year we had houseguests: Matt and Anne and their children. The day before Christmas Eve, Matt and I channeled our inner cavemen and grilled huge 17-ounce porterhouse steaks to meaty perfection. I had warned Matt repeatedly that Trouble really enjoyed the holidays as he thought everything was about him. Furthermore, Trouble tended to be particularly aggressive around food and would mimic Sir Edmund Hillary by scaling any height to eat anything left unattended.
I remember telling Matt, “Like Jaws, Trouble will try to eat anything on the surface in a split second.”
But Trouble was an angel all week.
He played with the children, left the presents alone and made no desperate sorties after food. Clearly, he was trying to make amends and get on Santa’s good list while simultaneously lulling us into complacency.
So it was against the idyllic backdrop of Christmas trees, multicolored gifts, excited children and a conspicuously well-behaved dog that Matt momentarily placed his steak on the kitchen counter and turned to the fridge for a beer. Time compressed as I realized what was about to happen. I recognized the look of comprehension in Trouble’s eyes as he thought, “Yes, all this good behavior is going to pay off!”
It was akin to a giant python sizing up the goat he was about to swallow whole, though in Trouble’s case it didn’t even matter if he could fit the prize down his gullet. Trouble reared up on his back legs, uncoiled his long neck and, in one inexorable gulp, smoothly scooped the juicy porterhouse off the plate faster than the T-Rex downed that guy sitting on the outhouse toilet in “Jurassic Park.”
The cooked-to-perfection steak was gone. Or was it?
Porterhouses often have bones running laterally across the top, so the metaphorical goat didn’t fit smoothly into Trouble’s mouth. Instead the bone lodged firmly across the narrow portion of his jaw, the meaty part of the steak dangling, juice running down his throat.
He kept flicking his head and neck back and forth as if to forcibly gulp the steak down into his stomach. Time decompressed, and Matt grabbed the bone outcropping, attempting to remove the half bitten, laden-in-dog-saliva cut of meat from Trouble’s mouth.
He was yelling “This is Sparta!” and “Thou shall not pass!”
Sighing, I asked Matt, “Even if we do get the steak out of his mouth, are you going to eat it?”
Plus, he was mixing up movie references.
So we gave up.
Matt and I ate slightly less steak, and Trouble, complete with a large steak bump in his belly, alighted to his bed for a long winter’s nap.
