My dog sucks

For some reason, ever since I moved out on my own I've wanted nothing more than to have my very own dog. Back when I lived at home, we had five dogs that were varying degrees of crazy and I hated them. They laid all over the furniture, got their hair on everything, were all terrified of storms, and stole food and constantly begged for attention. When I moved out, all I took was my cat, Phoenix, and my husband. But once a year passed, I started missing the dogs and I somehow convinced myself that if I got a dog, my dog would be super awesome and well behaved and shiny and perfect and would know all kinds of fancy tricks and compete in competitions and all kinds of crazy stuff. I really, REALLY wanted a dog, and I convinced my husband that we need to get one.

Dog adoption is crazy intense. We tried and tried, filling out forms and emailing people, and our poor friends and family members were getting phone calls from people trying to verify whether we were good pet owners or if we planned on adopting a bunch of dogs and eating them. Finally, we got approved and picked out a puppy, only to have our landlord turn him down because he was mixed with one of the restricted breeds at our complex. Frustrated, we started visiting pet shops, even though I'd always been told never to buy from a pet store. The pet store people were extremely pushy. While I was walking around the store, a lady came up and handed me a golden retriever puppy, I guess in an attempt to make me fall so deeply in love with him that I was willing to pay two thousand dollars for it. It halfway worked too, because that puppy was trained in cuteness. He put me in a cuteness coma so deep that I almost handed over the credit card.

But I regained my senses and left empty handed. Once we were home, the hubby started browsing the net for golden retriever puppies and actually stumbled upon an advertisement for three month old puppies. We called and asked if we could come and see them, and the lady on the phone was very nice and said we could come right away. It was an hour and a half drive to their crazy farm out in the middle of nowhere. When we pulled up, a zebra was wandering around the yard, and a ways away, a camel was chilling in a field with some goats and horses. We met the puppies and three hundred dollars and another hour and a half car ride later, we had our dog! We named him Apollo and I immediately started Googling his breed, which is well known for their gentleness, intelligence and aptitude for agility training.

I imagined my life with him like this:

In actuality, It's a lot more like this:


He likes to take a poop in the most random, inappropriate place he can find, like right in front of the Half Priced Books near my apartment. Whenever it happens, I never have a bag to pick it up, so I have to be all like "Ummm, I'm going to totally come back for this . . ." And I do, because I'm responsible and all that, but I know there are people watching me like "Ughhh, clean up after your dog, you hooligan."

Here is a brief history of some of my awesome dog owning experiences:



He ate my bikini top and I didn't even know, so I wore it out in public that way.



Every morning, he insists on getting in the shower. If I won't let him, he just stands to the side and sticks his head in to try and lick me while I shave my legs.



He finds these disgusting, rotting, dead baby birds on the ground and tries to eat them. I have to pull them out of his mouth while he frantically tries to swallow them. I would assume that the birds fall out of their nests during storms or something, but occasionally he finds these things that appear to be the skins of mice, which makes me wonder if there is a budding serial killer in my apartment complex.

He's also not fixed yet, so when he's not humping the couch pillows into submission, he out hunting for tail. His favorite dog in the complex is a tiny Yorkie named Chloey who is the size of his mouth. She is very flirtatious with him even though there is no conceivable way that they could ever get it on. I hope.