Ms. Dog say Bork Bork

I'd like to tell you about the dogs. I probably have already mentioned them but I want to make sure that all the johnny-come-latelies can get up to speed. So, our dog-story so far: I have a dog. Have, while he is mine (h/t Bill S.) an angry little doggo named Sparky. He is called by many names -- Sparkles, Sparkster, Spark-o, Sparks, Thor (by my brother, but that makes sense because he calls his daughter Natasha), but his name is Sparky. He is the last angry dog until the next angry dog. He is a prolific writer (2 books, with 2 or 3 in the works, and a blog) and a dog of unquestioned brilliance and cute-osity. He has a friend named Princess. She is is nice, if you like bundles of slobbery tongues, and has the brains of a swarm of drunk pebbles. They spend a lot of time together (but the relationship is purely gin-tonic). They were over this afternoon, and the rain started coming down.

Let's talk weather. Sparky is OK with weather. If it rains, it snows or glooms, Sparky just sits there, knowing that as long as he can maintain his bladder, he will be staying inside, away from the elements and molecules that make up weather. Princess is a little different. She is afraid of stuff. She is fast as a dingo, vicious as a dingo and dumb as a dingo, but she is really afraid of thunder. At the first dip in barometric pressure she starts to shake like a milkshake held by a Parkinson's patient. Not my best image, but you get what I'm saying. She shakes. Her human puts a special thunder shirt on her (not one supporting a professional team...one with weights built in that is supposed to give her the reassuring pressure which tells her that if the thunder comes, she will now be too slow to escape it so she might as well just siddown and die) and she runs up the stairs where, she figures, thunder won't think to look for her.

The thunder started and Princess ran. I decided that inclement weather was the best time to start making a chicken omelet. Like there's a bad time to start making a chicken omelet -- amirite? Boo-ya.

As an inducement to stop being stupid, I told the dogs that I would be handling uneaten chicken, their favorite kind. As I began prepping, Sparky wandered in and I rewarded him with pieces of leftover fowl. I continued cooking, using up my store of secret ingredients: oil and a pan. As I shredded chicken, I called out, "Hey Princess, I have chicken."

Now this is where things get difficult for me.

She did not appear. I called again, "Princess! Chicken." Sparky looked at me as if to remind me that he was RIGHT THERE and why was I not giving him chicken instead of inviting his sworn enemy when it comes to chicken eating. I gave him a piece so that he would stop staring at me, then I raised my voice, "Dammit Princess, I have chicken! What are you waiting for?" Nothing. So I started muttering.

Please know, muttering and I have a long and colorful history. I mutter all the time. I'm the grand mutter of muttering. I started muttering to myself how this dumb dog wasn't coming down to get chicken while I'm here cooking my chicken fingers to the boneless. I realized that, at that moment, I had gotten angry at a dog because said dog (and I did, indeed, say "dog") did not come down when I called her name and explained why she should come down. Again. I got angry at a dog, a dog whom I have already characterized as not as intelligent as another dog, for not understanding my logic which I so cogently explained in words. I believe that this bespeaks some very strange transformation in my mental processes, and not a good one.

Princess ultimately showed up, lured by the smell of cooking chicken and the cessation of thunder and my wrath abated. My senseless, stupid wrath aimed at a dog who did not live up to my human expectations. I'm not sure what to make of this, or what lesson to glean. Alls I know is that of the two of us, me and Princess, one of us gets to wear a cool thunder shirt and the other has to do the cooking.