Blog 4

Hello hello. I would like it on the record that I actually attempted to go to sleep at an early hour tonight. However, as my insomnia is currently more powerful than my body’s need for sleep, and one can only stare at the ceiling for so long, I have decided to write this instead.  This is relatively unfortunate as I actually need to be awake fairly early tomorrow, and was planning on writing this in a break I have between a meeting and class, but clearly that was not meant to be.

I walked out of class on Friday with an idea for a blog post that was actually relevant to our in-class discussion, but at the moment cannot recall what it was for the life of me. I’m going to blame the late hour, and not that fact that I waited a full 5 days to write this.

Instead, I’m going to ramble about my dog. His name is Beau, and he’s a shiba inu. Yes, I own a shibe. He genuinely responds to “Doge” almost as well as he does his own name. My cousin is completely at fault for this. Maybe one day I will forgive him for it.

Beau also the oddest dog you’ll ever meet. He’s equally as likely to stare at you with sad eyes until you let him on the sofa, as he is to run around with the local coyotes. I’m not kidding, coyotes. A year or two ago my parents moved to the middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania. And by that I don’t mean there-are-no-major-malls-nearby-nowhere but the-actual-forest-good-luck-finding-a-grocery-store-nowhere. It’s fairly common to spot coyotes or the occasional bear, so we were understandably concerned about letting the dog roam free outside. Especially since coyotes are known to attack domestic canines. Despite the fact that Beau is larger than your average Shiba, this was still a concern. Long story short, Beau instead befriended a handful of local wild coyotes and hunts with them. We’re not sure if they saw him trying to take down a squirrel one day and he impressed them, or if they’re just really concerned about the small odd-looking coyote who clearly needs some help if he’s to survive the winter, but at least my parents don’t have to drive 45 minutes to the nearest dog park for Beau to have friends.          

If you were wondering about the name or spelling, yes, I named my dog “handsome” in French. I also trained him entirely in French, which drove my mother completely nuts until I caved and taught him commands in English, since mom doesn’t speak any French at all. Interestingly, he now follows commands in French and English equally well, except for “let’s go/come on” which he only follows in French and “down” which he only follows in English. My mother tried to start teaching him commands in German to get back at me, as that’s the one language she speaks that I do not, but it never stuck. I like to pretend it’s because I’m the better dog trainer, but honestly Beau may have just been annoyed with the constant language changes.     

I’d apologize for the extensive dog tangent, but my options were to rant about this, how much I hate physics, or how I awkwardly ran into my ex in Curry today. This was clearly the best of these options, seeing as my dog is the best dog ever. And no, I’m not biased.