I don’t take offense when children come to our door seeking advice from Rudy, our Jack Russell. He meets them with a mouthful of arfs and barks and the kids seem happy about his utterances. I don’t get too bent out of shape when I see our pooch out in the yard chowing down on rabbit doo doo either. I’m less happy about his recent bladder trouble and the puddles we find in hidden places behind curtains. I have to draw the line, however, when Rudy finds an excuse not to do his job – that being: Keeping animals out of our house.
On Saturday, we left the back door open for only a few minutes and before we knew it, a bird was in our house, flapping and chirping and fertilizing the carpet. Rudy ignored the bird as if it were suppose to be there. He looked up and ran out the back door like a bee had built a nest in his butt. We finally corralled the bird and ushered it out the door, but only after it slammed into a couple of windows and dropped guano everywhere.
While this was going on, Rudy stood on the deck, looking earnestly into the sky as if waiting for God to give him instructions. The escaping bird flew right past him, nearly hitting him in the head, its wings ruffling his fur. He never even twitched.
Later in the same day, the cat strolled through the yard and Rudy sat in silence with his back to the feline, ignoring it as well. This is not the Rudy we know. I called him over and examined his eyes to see if he was going blind. He starred intently into my eyes like George Bush looking at Putin. His normally expressive face was vacant. He winked at me, a little Palin thing going on. I felt like Joe the Plumber or Jack the Ass. Had he been palling around withcats, squirrels and birds?
An hour later he bolted out the door, slipped down trying to make a 90-degree turn and zoomed down the steps and into the trees. A squirrel was roaming in the branches above him and he howled as the squirrel made, well, squirrel sounds.
I was pretty excited about his old-school Rudy behavior. But by late afternoon, Rudy was dead asleep next to the back door as I sat on the deck reading Team of Rivals. The squirrel eased up the stairs and tiptoed to the slightly-open back door and peeped in at Rudy snoring. The squirrel looked absolutely like he was going to walk right past Rudy into the house, just like the bird earlier. I couldn’t believe it. It was like we were building an ark or something and animals were showing up to board. I jumped up and smacked the paper on the table and the squirrel ran away.
“I’m doing your job!” I yelled at Rudy.
Rudy looked up calmly, cut his eyes back and forth, dropped his head back to the floor and exhaling deeply through his snout in a tiny Harley rumble.
My wife walked over to him, leaned down and whispered Trump-ishly into his ear, “Rudy, you’re fired.”
He burped loudly. Actually it was a belch, which differs from a burp in its absurd grossness. The aroma of rabbit poop filled the air. We looked at him like a stranger.
“He turns seven years old this month,” I said. “That’s about forty-nine years old in dog years.”
My wife looked at him ponderously.
“Can a Jack have a midlife crisis?” she asked.
