You’re Not The Boss Of Me
People who live with Border Terriers should know their place.
My name is Piper La Grange. I’m an eleven-year-old female Border Terrier. I’m here with an important reminder for people who live with Border Terriers. You call yourselves our owners. You say you’re our masters. You say you’re our moms and dads. We don’t care. Just don’t forget what you really are: our administrative assistants.
What does that mean? It means we get to treat you like managers in the business world treat their admin assistants. We can:
- Change your job description whenever we feel like it. Take my mom, for instance. Before taking a nap on my dog-bed in the living room, I used to walk around in circles on it. Last week I changed Mom’s job: now she does that for me. (I’m also thinking of having her do my butt-scooting across the floor for me.)
- Add work to your plate even when it’s already overflowing. Last Saturday, Mom and I ran into a nice stranger while walking home. Normally, I’d have licked his face or humped his leg. But I was tired, Mom’s my assistant, so I had her do it. Sure, she complained. I told her she’s lucky: if we’d have run into a strange dog, I might have told her to sniff its butt for me.
- Require you to do personal stuff for us. I’ve had Mom arrange play-dates for me with the brawny bulldog down the street whose balls clack together when he walks. When I feel like swingin’ my tail the other way, I’ve told Mom to arrange a backyard rendezvous with the cute dachshund next door who waves her heinie in the breeze when she does a downward dog.
- Delegate blame to you. Recently, one of Mom’s friends noticed a revolting stain on her sofa. I didn’t admit that I’d expressed my anal glands while laying there. I told the friend Mom did it.
- Take our problems out on you. Yesterday I got fed up with the rat race. By which I mean, a rat was racing around the house, I couldn’t catch it, and I got fed up. So I gutted my Gumby and Winnie The Pooh plush toys. Maybe Mom shouldn’t have had to sweep up their innards. But it’s her job to clean up my messes. And in my defense, I didn’t like the way Winnie was lookin’ at me, and Gumby had it comin’.
Border Terrier owners normally accept their role as our admin assistants. But sometimes they forget their place. Then we have to remind them who’s boss.
Take Mom for instance. Last Saturday, she got tired of smelling my dog-breath. She announced her intention to brush my teeth. A Pug would have put up with it. A dopey Golden Retriever would have actually liked it. Not me. I hid behind my doughnut toy. Somehow, Mom found me anyway and gave my teeth a scrubbing. She left such a disgusting taste in my mouth, I had to lick my lady bits for an hour to get rid of it.
Clearly, Mom overstepped her bounds. I had to put her in her place. So that night, while Mom and her date watched a classic skin flick called Flesh Gordon in the living room, I grabbed her tube of blueberry lube off the nightstand and chewed it to bits. After the movie, Mom and her date wanted to do an encore in the bedroom. When they discovered what I’d done, they had to settle for a dry run.
Mom barked at me, of course. But I’m so adorable, she couldn’t stay mad for long. (Mom says my cuteness is what’s kept me alive all these years.)
As for me, I pooped funny for a few days. Normally I gotta bear down to squeeze out a dookie. After eating lube, they glided out on their own. The downside was that boy-dogs wouldn’t sniff my booty for days. They don’t trust a bitch with a fruity patootie.
Here’s another time Mom was out of line. She decided to give me a bath, even though I’d already had one that month. It had something to do with the dead fish I’d rolled over by the creek. I tried to escape by burrowing ‘tween the bedsheets. When she pulled ’em back, I squirmed under her pillow. Despite being oily and scaly, she grabbed me, carried me to the shower, and practically waterboarded me.
I responded to Mom’s bad behavior by administering a “correction.” I chewed through the leather strips of the strap-on she planned to use to poke fun at her date later that night. When Mom and her date assumed their positions, she discovered her strap-on was a “strap-off.”
Mind you, I don’t just pick on Mom. My babysitters occasionally exceed their authority when they deal with me.
There’s Aunt Hattie. (Mom introduces my babysitters to me as my aunts and uncles.) She lost it one day after I disemboweled her sofa cushion while trying to nest in it. I don’t know why she objected. Ya gotta break an egg to make an omelette. Nonetheless, she made me take a time-out in her bedroom.
She shoulda known better than to boss around a Border Terrier. I jumped onto her bed, shoved my nose under her pillow, pulled out her favorite dildo, and gnawed it down to a nub. Poor Aunt Hattie. She’s a Rolling Stones fan — a “gather-no-mosser” from way back. But though she played their music that evening, she wasn’t gonna get no satisfaction that night.
Then there’s Uncle Burt. One day he had the temerity to order me out of his bedroom. All I was doing was standing there, watching him engage in foreplay with his Big Betty Inflatable Sex Doll®. My aunts and uncles often complain they can’t make rumpy-pumpy when I stare at them. But that’s my job. Border Terriers are natural-born copulation cops. And we don’t just stare at people while they bow-chick-a-wow-wow. We intervene if things get out of hand. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve jumped onto a bed to save couples who were thrashing around in distress.
Anyway, Uncle Burt snarled at me get out. Then he went to the bathroom to get himself dolled up before doing the deed with his doll. I took the opportunity to remind him that actions have consequences. Betty had three orifices. I ripped her a new one. She was supposed to be “puncture-resistant”; she didn’t resist at all. By the time I was done, Betty didn’t contain enough air to puff a post-coital cigarette.
My point is this. If you live under a Border Terrier’s roof, you play by a Border Terrier’s rules. We’re in charge; you’re just our admin assistant. If you accept that, we’ll get along fine. If you don’t, consider what happened to Mom.
Part of her job is to pick up the toys I scatter around the house and put ’em in my toy basket. She’s been slacking off lately. When I pointed that out, she growled at me. Poor performance is bad enough; now she was being insubordinate. That’s unacceptable. When you’ve got four legs, you can’t let someone with only two walk all over you.
Since toys were the issue, I used one of Mom’s to make my point. While she was grocery shopping, I went to the display case on the wall next to her bed, and grabbed one of her high-powered semi-automatic vibrators. I took it to the back yard, pulled the cord to start ‘er up (that’s not easy when all you’ve got are teeth and paws), throttled it up to full power, then buried it in the garden.
Mom realized something was up while putting away the groceries. Through the open kitchen window, she heard the garden humming. She went outside and saw that the cucumbers were quivering. The cabbages were quaking The corn stalks were jostling and tomatoes were twitching. There was something familiar about it. Then it came to her: she does those things when she uses her “selfie stick.” She rushed back into the house, saw that her favorite vibrator was missing from the “gun rack”, observed the smirk on my face, and realized what was up.
As I write this, Mom’s trudging back and forth through the garden. She couldn’t find the hole. I swished the dirt with my tail to erase the evidence of digging. So she’s walking barefoot, hoping to locate the vibrator by feeling throbbing dirt beneath her feet. She may have to search for a long time. That vibrator’s lithium battery can run for a month. And I recharged it before burying it.
