Adorable

Little Miss Adorable

She's adorable. She was born that way, I guess, even though I wasn't there. All cottony white and fluffy eiderdown, with round cocoa cola eyes and pearly white choppers. She, looking around at the world with the interest of a born opportunist, just waiting until her little body could catch up with her devious desires. A few moons after and she, a whirling dervish of deviltry was pulling at the slumbering Pit bully boy's eyelid and challenging Dyna, who nobody or nothing in their right senses would dare to distress, challenging Dyna to a dominance showdown. Hurricanes Charley, Frances, and Jeane didn't daunt her. How can a hurricane dominant a dervish?

“She doesn't really sleep as far as we can tell,” Laura complained. “She just seems to micro-nap occasionally. She drives me crazy, getting into everything and nothing I do or say has any effect. She just looks at me as if to say, Well I am not sorry and eventually you'll stop yelling. Then you can throw the ball for me five hundred times.”

Why, I wondered, did you bring her into your life? But, I knew. She's adorable.

That's why I brought her into my life a year later. After she'd broken her hip playing too rough with Cody. After Dyna'd finally had enough and promised to have her for supper. After Laura finally was tearfully at her wit's end and planned to honor her sales agreement and give her back to the breeder who would certainly have put the now physically defective puppy down. She's adorable. That's what. And, the little beast, bouncy busy and bad to the bone plays it to the max at warp four.

Little miss adorable ACD was a obedience school drop out after chewing one too many times on the hapless boxer puppy. I've seen her flawless technique every time we walk and at every agility class since. Here's the scenerio: Wag the plumy silver tail, mouth open in doggy smile, black ears up, eyes bright, dancing a dingo prima ballerina dance. Strange dog approaches. She sniffs. Dog turns away to sniff. her adorable ACD butt and.wham... she nails it with a quick dart and scizzor snip. Dog screams. Owners frown. I know what they're thinking. Why can't you control that nasty little dog? Little miss adorable laughs inwardly. It's Chili -- whose AKC registered name tag is Big Trouble in Little China-- it's Chili 4, world zero. Again. It works on humans running past or bicycling too near, too. Lure em in. Attack from behind. Put em in their place according to the Cattle Dog's Life's Little Instruction Book.

“Oh she's soo cute,” people gush. “I want one of these dogs.”

“No, you don't.” I say. “Not unless you have a cattle ranch. Not unless you are willing to do agility and flyball, and spend hours at dog parks and the lake and pool or take endless walks and unless you have the patience of Mother Teresa.”

People fall for Chili's adorable persona all the time. People that haven't been dived bombed by the silver streak, that is. People who haven't spent all nighters at the emergency vet clinic once or twice a quarter after one of her spontaneous adventures gone horribly wrong, or had to give up their carpets to chewing and peeing games, had to put locks on their pantry and repaint the pantry doors when she circumvents the locks and baracades in search of doggy booty that will send her back to the emergency clinic. Shes so adorable. By crikey, she is! But beware, her ancestors were scratching fleas under the dingo tree just a short time ago in eviloutionary time. She's a wild canine child in every way. No rules just right. If the opportunity is there, so is Chili. Don't sweat the small stuff mate, eighteen Combat Quick Kill Roach Baits won't kill her. Anyway, it was fun finding them and breaking into the cabinet and chewing them into black plastic pulp. The butcher knives she knocked down didn't kill her either. The pottery didn't break on her head this time. And she looked so adorable greeting me when I came in the door before I rushed off to call the vet one more time.Yes, adorable with her black ears pricked forward, doggy smile and gleaming pearly choppers shining, pink tongue lolling out above her fluffy chest. Dancing her distinctive doggy dance.

Who knew adorable would be so deadly or could be so addictive? Or so effective. Well, I suspect, Chili did. Does.

Addendum: The snake she caught this morning wasn't venomous after all.