Moonbeam McQueen

Yesterday,  I went to a “Congratulations, You Finished Rehab” lunch, which, socially, was right on up there with the “My Son’s Going to Prison” barbecue I attended several years ago. Anyway, yesterday we celebrated by feasting on ribs and greens and candied sweet potatoes and apple pie, as the “rehabee” regaled us with the details of detox. It was a lot of fun.

Our hosts were a happy, easygoing couple, longtime friends of the guest of honor. I admired their dog, a strange looking black block of a Chihuahua, who has a habit of greeting guests happily, then snarling and growling threateningly when they try to leave (or move, or eat). He has a face and personality that only a mother could love, if that mother was blind and a little mentally off. He was mean and obnoxious, but very interesting as doggies go, and so I asked his owner how  she and her husband had come to acquire him.

Apparently, a few years ago, the couple lived in another city, in a nice big house on a street full of dilapidated small ones. The dog lived across the street with a woman who had a penchant for pot, beer and other recreational drugs.

“That dog was pitiful,” his current owner relayed. “He was always running around loose. That woman didn’t care a thing about him. I kept telling her I’d buy him. ‘I’ll give you a hundred dollars right now,’ I said, but she wouldn’t sell him. So I waited until I knew she had no money or pot or beer, then I went over to her house with fifty dollars in my hand, and she sold him on the spot.”

I laughed at our hostess’s cleverness, and this seemed to encourage her to tell more.

“Yeah, after that, when that woman would see her little dog with me, riding in our Mercedes, she’d say, ‘Little Oreo done went from the poor house to the big house.’ “

It was true. This ugly little dog was now living a charmed life, with owners that loved him and spoiled him and cared. Before, our hostess said, he had a shoestring for a leash and the pothead woman made a sweater for him by cutting off the sleeve of one of her old t-shirts.

“Once, he broke his leg and she set it with a popsicle stick and duct tape.”

By this time, I was almost curled into the fetal position, I was laughing so hard. I kept picturing this little Welfare dog, with his shoestring leash and duct taped leg, hobbling around wearing an old ragged t-shirt sleeve. I was half expecting to hear that he was fed rocks and had a twist tie for a collar. Did he have to walk fifteen miles in the snow to go to obedience school? Did cats make fun of him?

Anyway, he seems to be doing fine now, ordering his people around and growling at strangers when they try to go home. I finally was able to leave, happy to return to Theo the Wonderdog®, who, incidentally, looked quite stylish in his orange hoodie with the fake fur trim