Here’s the scenario.
You have just ordered a pizza. You have two dogs, one of whom is very, ah, “friendly” and would like nothing more than to run around the neighborhood for several hours. You do not have an “invisible fence”, nor do you lock your dogs in a backroom when the pizza guy opens the screen door and knocks on your front door.
No. Instead, you assume that the pizza guy has shut the screen door. Then you open the front door, the dog gets out (after jumping all over me), and after muttering “shit” (the first word you’ve said since the pizza guy’s arrival) in rapid succession, you scramble the kids to track the dog down, pay the pizza guy, then call the pizza guy’s boss making the pizza guy out to be the villain.
Exsfuckincuse me?
I mean, let me just say, that when you’ve got a dog (golden retriever) that’s trying to take me for the horizontal doggy-thrust and nearly knocking your pizza to the ground in the process, that isn’t the pizza guy fuckin’ up, that’s you needing to take your fucking dog to a dog trainer and teaching it some fucking manners. Alternatively, you could invest in an “invisible fence”, or, if you’re a real cheap bastard — and judging by your tip, you are — this neat thing called a “leash.”
You know what else would’ve worked? Saying, “Hey, don’t let me dog out” when I was still between it and the front yard. Instead, I get a litany of “shit shit shit shit shit” from some white trash redneck with a beer belly hanging to his fucking knees.
In the note section of the customer information, I added this line: “Poorly trained dog(s) will try to escape.” This will appear on the delivery slip every time this customer orders. Perhaps one day he will see the note (it reproduces on the box tickets, too) and think “Hmmm. Maybe I should train my dog not to run away.”
Greg asked me if I was planning any retribution. Personally, I think the thought alone of the old redneck with the massive beerbelly running around his neighborhood chasing down a hyper golden retriever is more than revenge enough. I did, briefly, toy with the idea of taking Neckbone’s Wrangler into the fucker’s front yard and pulling a few figure eights in first gear.
Or, alternatively, I’ll buy a fucking leash and leave it on his mailbox.
***
Do you know why I have cats? In the grand scheme? Because with cats, training effectively ends after you’ve locked them in the bathroom with the litter box for twenty minutes. “Oh,” the say. “This is where I poop.” Then they go curl up under the sofa, and aside for occasional trips to the kitchen to eat and the litter box to poop, that’s how they spend the rest of their natural lives. They don’t try to hump the pizza guy and run away into the neighborhood.