By Clayton Dean
My name is Clayton Dean, and I have a problem: an underfed, overhyped, overwrought tongue that is attached to a dog. The dog in question acts as if he’s had a large tapeworm surgically implanted into his abdomen. When food is in the room, he acts similarly to first-graders anxiously putting up their arms for the teacher when they know the answer. Picture a young Arnold Horseshack saying, “Ooh, ooh, pick me, Mr. Kotter.” He will jump completely off the ground to lick your face in feigned affection that is actually an attempt to knock you, or the food you’re carrying, onto the floor. 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.
Trouble loves food. Have I said that? He loves food. He’s the living embodiment of a combination of Dom DeLuise, Paula Deen and Fat Albert. My son and I joke he has four interchangeable stomachs. Every Friday is pizza night with our dear friends who live across Arlington near our old neighborhood. Well, Trouble loves pizza night; it’s a complex game of one-upmanship where Trouble tries to bypass our well-crafted food defenses. When the pizza arrives, Trouble struts into the kitchen like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, and the game, unfortunately, is on. We’ve trained the kids to put their pizza up on top of a 5-foot-high bookcase so that Trouble can’t eat their food. But Trouble devised a way to balance on his hind legs and telescope his neck up and over the rim to the pizza. We debated if he looks more like a T. rex, what with the tail back and small little hands, or a snake telescoping his neck to epic extended proportions. This past week Trouble outdid himself. Mocking our Redskins-like defense, he scored four separate pieces of pizza. His success was evidenced by much yelling, chasing and locking of said dog-jaws on pizza as various human hands, sticks and perhaps a random paw or two tried to act as the Jaws of Life and pry open his tooth-encased gullet. You could pry open a bank vault barehanded sooner than get Trouble’s mouth open. And with a quick flick of his neck and a hearty swallow, the pizza was gone faster than a Megan Fox movie from the theaters.
The worst part about this is Trouble has now taught our other dog this trick. She always was the obedient, docile one. Now, they’ve become the Bonnie and Clyde of food crime. Nothing is safe. Food in garbage? Child’s play. Food in the sink? Fuhgeddaboudit. One time we came upstairs and found Trouble on top of the 4-foot counter chowing down on some pasta that was left in a colander. He clearly saw it as the perfect dog bowl. As a parent of teenagers, I’m further challenged as I find the occasional dirty dish on top of book shelves all over the house, on top of the refrigerator, even in a closet. Sure, it’s safe from Trouble, but too often it’s safe from the dishwasher as well. We’re essentially hostages in our own house. So if you ever want to come over, don’t bring food. Not to disparage Twilight … well on second thought, disparaging Twilight … if you show up with food, Trouble will be on you like the vampire on the protagonist in an angst-filled young adult romance novel screen adaptation.
( February 2016 )
