Published: July 18, 2008 11:26 pm            

Life is sweet for Su-the-Weenie-Dog

EDMOND — This is Su-the-Weenie-Dog, coming to you from beneath the dinette table. So far I’ve resisted nibbling on four sets of sandal-clad feet. Yum. I do love toes.

Today is Monday Bridge day. I’d know that even if I couldn’t hear the shuffling of cards. They’re delicious if they’re all like the eight of hearts I once ate. I’m a dog. Dogs do things like that.

Anyhow, I knew we were having company the minute the doorbell rang and She — my pet person — scooped me up and stuffed me into my kitchen crate. She does that so She can open the puppy gate that keeps me out of the living room. A tension fence used to do that. She replaced it with the gate when one of her short-legged friends got stuck on high center.

You never heard such a ruckus as those ladies made scurrying about, screeching suggestions of ways they might get the stuck one unstuck. I couldn’t see the goings-on from my crate, but I joined in all the same. I don’t bark. I hum, but She says it’s more like a cluck. Maybe I would bark if She didn’t give me what I want even before I know I want it.

Whatever I do, it’s nothing like the noise those ladies made before the short one came unstuck and they settled down to play cards. By the next week, She’d replaced the fence with a gate, but some forgot and stepped over anyway. Not the short one. If I’d got hung up like she did, I wouldn’t have come back at all. Shorty must like bridge a lot.

It was that day when She dropped the eight of hearts and couldn’t get the deal to come out even. I left a shred of it on the back porch so She’d know to throw out the rest of that useless deck. It was the least I could do.

I love company, but they wear me out. I’m cute, so I lie still in my kitchen crate, rolling my eyes and humming pitifully. Soon one of the ladies insists that She open the crate and let me join the party. She always does, but first she puts the ladies’ purses up high where I can’t get into them. She also reminds the ladies to scoot their chairs under the table if they get up.

Someone always forgets, and I count on that. I can spring onto a chair and be on the table in the blink of an eye, and what mayhem I create there! King-Tut-the-Cat showed me how to do that, he-he. She’s been known to leave her reading glasses there, and more ball point pens than I can count. Every one of them was delicious.

So was the stick of butter I found on the table after one batch of company left, but the aftermath was tumultuous. I was reminded of the last toad I ate. Or it could have been the one before that. I know they’re going to make me sick before I eat them, but I’m a creature of habit. It was Shorty who learned her lesson, not me.

King Tut is more than the resident cat, he’s also my best friend. I never thought I’d say that, but it’s true. Whatta guy! This spring he started teaching me to stalk birds and mice. I’ll never be as good at that as he is, but I’m better at digging up toads. The Tutter’s proud of me, but I thought Shorty would hit high center again when I laid one at her feet.

        

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