more about gdog

Last night, Gus and JoJo were outside, and Jack, Jr, and I were downstairs watching Arrested Development reruns on Netflix. For some reason that no one can explain, Little Black Cat Louise came into the theater room, hopped up on my lap, and began rubbing up under my chin just like she did before we got Gus. She hadn't quite worked herself up to a purr when Jr said, "Hi Gus." That's all he said. Hi Gus. Gus wasn't in the house. But Weezer stopped, instantly hissed, and bolted from the room, back into the storage room that she and the other cats have claimed as theirs.

That is the effect Gus has on the cats. I suspect it is his nonstop barking at them as well as his attempts to jump up and on them that has caused them to refuse to participate in the bff project anymore. I'd like to think that given enough time, Gus and the kitties could become friends, but it may take more time than any of them have in this life.

Things to know about Gus

• He really has no interest in chasing balls but loves to hang onto JoJo's neck while she runs after a ball
• He thinks he can jump from one shelf vertically onto the next shelf up and has convinced the cats of that ability even though obviously, he's never been able to successfully complete this trick
• He has figured out that the bathtub has water in it and since he isn't tall enough to drink from the toilet, he instead leaps into the tub regularly and waits for the water to start flowing even though he has clean water in a bowl in the kitchen which is always a total surprise to him, like he's never seen it before and is puzzled when it magically appears

The dog was shortchanged when brains were being handed out and I mean that in the kindest way possible--

• He can't remember anything except a few of his people--well, that isn't totally accurate; he learned right off how to catch human food when tossed at him. Yep, we taught him that.
  
• He seems to hear stuff that nobody else hears, and he is always quite certain that we need to be alerted to that something, so he leaps from the piece of furniture he's sitting on, races to the front door, and races back, barking wildly all of the way, but making sure nobody could possibly think for a second that he's going to be the one barking at the door scaring off whatever has caused the commotion he thinks is ongoing because he certainly is not going to wait around for some big scary noise to get him. It used to be that whenever Gus heard something and started barking and leaping about that JoJo would immediately join in the warning. Not so much now. He's a bit dramatic.
  
• He also missed out when the sense of smell was being handed out. Probably wouldn't be so obvious if he didn't live with JoJo who seems to have an ultra-developed sense of smell. If Gus doesn't see you throw a bite of food to him, it isn't there to him. Even if it's under his foot. Jo, on the other hand, can circle the yard and locate the ball you threw most recently from the other dozen strewn about even if it's in the wading pool or a clump of grass or behind the shed.
  

Some of my favorite things about Gus are:

• He learned right off how to jump up into my arms while I'm standing up and has taught himself how to turn a jump into a somersault for those times when I'm not expecting him to leap into my arms
  
• He is quite simply adorable when he stands on his hind legs and does his prairie dog imitation
  
• He loves to snuggle up and give kisses--the other day I saw him laying next to Jo with his paw across her nose, licking and cleaning her eyes as though she were his baby. That was total sweetness compared to their occasionally intense disagreements over rawhide bones.

One of the oddest quirks about Gus is his determination to rid the world of bugs. He is fascinated by the buzzing things in the gardens during the warm months, and even during winter with all of the snow, his normal pattern upon going out back is to run immediately to the dead clumps of perennials in hopes that something will be flying or crawling around so he can pounce on it and end its life.

In addition to his other issues, Gus seems to have extremely poor eyesight. Every now and then, he finds a spider in the house and will knock it off the wall and eat it before the spider has a chance to escape. He's so quick that way. And just last week, I watched him pounce on and eat a piece of lint on the bathroom floor before it could get away, and later, he also carefully licked a freckle on my collarbone, doing his best to try to remove it.

With all of the issues he deals with, you might think that Gus would be a bit sour on life. Certainly, he could suffer from the little dog syndrome and he could feel bitter considering that he has an overdeveloped sense of hearing accompanied by a huge imagination and nearly no eyesight or sense of smell. Occasionally he gets a bit testy with JoJo, especially when she's holding him down and squeaking one of her balls on top of him or when he's working on a rawhide chew and she casually strolls by and distracts him by whispering "here, kitty, kitty" and then takes his chew while he explodes across the room in search of the cat. But most of the time, considering everything, he's a pretty good sport, even when he forgets to put down his back leg while running and even when he can't slow down and races full speed through the kitchen and slams the wall when he can't quite make the turn into the hallway. He's easy to pick up and comfort and then he's off again.

Besides, small dog = small poop.