Snooty Got Served

Walking Snoots is typically a trial of one’s patience. He’s extremely territorial and stops everywhere to sniff and piss. Where most dogs (especially those that pull their owners’ leashes on walks, a.k.a. “dream dogs”) sniff a spot for a couple of seconds, pee, and move on, Snoots takes forever. Sometimes the tiniest branch will get a solid 10-15 seconds of thorough sniffing. It’s utterly ridiculous (particularly in the latter stages of a walk, when he has no more urine in his body, rendering the whole exercise moot), and often gets a laugh from me; most of the time, though, I want to get on with my life, and tell him to hurry it up.

My theory is that he’s hard of smelling. What the average dog can “process” in a second or two takes Shithead much longer. I’ve heard other owners refer to dogs’ daily walking/sniffing/peeing routine as “reading the news”; if this is the case, Snoots is somewhere between dyslexic and illiterate.

Little Assface.

Evidence for my hard-of-smelling theory presented itself this evening on our walk. We were walking along a chain-link fence; on the other side, at the end of the fence, was a cat. I spotted him first, and held the leash as Snoots got closer. Snoots sniffed all along the fenceline, oblivious to the cat. When he reached the fence’s end, he turned into the yard, and finally noticed it — eighteen inches directly in front of his face.

Well, this led to a brief standoff. I’m never sure what exactly is going through Snooty’s mind during these situations (other than, perhaps, a stiff breeze). Is it childlike curiosity? Unfiltered malevolence? Well, I didn’t have too long to ponder it tonight, because BOOM! The cat ferociously lurched toward Snoots, who BOLTED back down the sidewalk. And this cat, not yet satisfied with its Serving of Snoots, followed him for another thirty feet, with his front paws in full aggro-extension mode.

This got a huge laugh from me, and a smile from a passing bicyclist. It reminded me of a similar Serving a few years ago. Snoots, off leash, spotted a cat in a yard 150 feet in front of him and made a beeline straight for it. The cat saw him coming and calmly held its ground. Snoots went 145 feet and stopped dead in his tracks. This time, the stare-down lasted much longer. You could almost hear the “Mexican standoff music” from the Wild West as they pondered one another. And then… the cat flinched — and Snoots, honest to God, jumped twelve inches straight up in the air.

With Little Assface, it’s the little things.