YOU NEED A DOG!

My friend Janey, who I’ve known for more than 23 years, now— as impossible as that may seem to both of us— is the biggest animal lover I know.  She has never, in all that time, been without a house full of cats and Golden Retrievers. 

She loves her animals so much that she gives them the best of lives, and the best of her, for 15 years or so; then, when it's time, with a broken heart, she stays with them and holds them, until they’re ready to move on.

Janey wants me to get a dog….always.   

She’ll call me and say…

YOU NEED A DOG…!!!

WHAT”S WRONG WITH YOU????

Then she goes on to chastise me in her exceptional Queen of Queens twang—which mostly sounds like other people do when they have a very bad cold—and tells me that since I work from home I’d be a perfect dog owner, but I am the most selfish person in the universe…because I don’t have a dog!!!

And I don’t disagree. I am the most selfish person in the universe....

 I can barely take the time to water my plants...

.

let alone a dog.











She’s says, a dog will keep me company while I work...and make me laugh

All true, I say.

She says, a dog will give me companionship on my walks, fetch my newspaper and give me a sense of responsibility by demanding I take care of it.

I tell her that what I would really like is for the dog to not only fetch my newspaper but read it to me as well.

Then she usually says I’m an ass and hangs up the phone.

And this goes on and on in some variation several times a month.

In between, she tells me I should do more writing because she says I have a knack for it and people would like to read it.

She told me, 10 years ago, I should start a blog, she reminds me. 

She said I would enjoy it. She said she would enjoy it. 

I told her that maybe I would, soon...and now, 10 years later, I have.... 

And she was right…she does enjoy it…but I’m still on the fence. 

She says, you’re a great writer but people just don’t know that yet.

I tell her, I know I’m a great writer because my friend Joanne gave me a mug that says just that, right on the side…

Janey says, see, it must be true…it says so on the mug!

I say, I also have mugs that say I’m Cool as a Moose…

She says, you are Cool as a Moose, and with that I can’t disagree…I am.

We go on like this all the time.  Sometimes I’m her therapist, sometimes she’s mine.

She tells me, she can’t imagine being dead.

I tell her, no one can…unless they're dead. And then it’s difficult to talk....

She gets annoyed and says to stop kidding around. She tells met that she’s serious.  That she was watching a Cary Grant movie, the other night, and everyone in it was dead.

I say, it must be a very boring movie....

She again says, I’m an ass and hangs up the phone.

Then Janey will call and tell me that her landscaper is an ass, which makes me feel better, since now, I'm not the only one.

She says, she tells him to clean out the weeds on her fence, but he only cleans the weeds off her neighbor’s side of the fence and leaves her weeds alone.

I say, maybe he misunderstood, and she says no, he understood.  He just did it to spite me.

I say, why would he want to spite you?

And she says, because she told him that he cut the lawn crooked.

Crooked?

Yeah, she says. All the blades of grass are crooked. You should see them.

I say, maybe you’re just standing crooked, you know because of your one flat foot.

Then she starts to call me an ass, and I stop her and tell her, I’m glad she’s been my friend for all these years.

She thinks about this for a second then says…

Me too…but …

YOU NEED A DOG…!!!

WHAT”S WRONG WITH YOU????