As you probably know, we have two dogs. Mack is a little 60 pound mutt. He rocks completely. His Roman name is Smackimus Desmus Meridius. He is, without a doubt, the coolest dog that has ever lived. Everyone who has spent any time with him feels this way. He is exactly what happens when evolution is allowed to run its course: he’s smallish, strong, fast, smart, sturdy, and farts. He is so engaged it’s just a blast to be around him. He’s always 100% certain that he can contribute to every activity and do something to make the current situation cooler.

The other dog is Kirki (who we call Beene) and leaves you with exactly the opposite impression: she is big, frail, lazy, disengaged, and slow. But man, she can make me laugh like nothing else. Just seeing her run up a flight of stairs is amusing - complete with the look of accomplishment that she has in her eyes when she reaches the top. (It has to be a short flight of stairs, though, or she’ll lose interest before getting to the top. In that case, she has a look self-pity in her eyes.) She also has no clue what the point of playing “fetch” is. As far as she can tell, the object of the game is try to grab Mack by the top of the neck. Mack, of course, is much faster than she, so he always gets to the ball before she does, and she’s consequently always just gone after Mack instead of the ball. (This past week, though, Mack got carried away and ran in the wrong direction. Beene saw the ball fall and stopped dead in her tracks and looked over at Mack. She looked at the ball. Back at Mack. Back at the ball. You could almost hear the switch in her big empty head flip just before she lunged after the ball, picked it up, and pretended like she’d just ended world hunger.)

She also has this sense of entitlement about her that you can’t really understand until you meet her. For example, she believes she should be able to sit wherever the interesting stuff it happening. Now, there’s usually someone else already sitting there because, well, that’s where all the interesting stuff is happening. So, she’ll often just back up and sit on the lap of whoever is sitting there. This happens without fail when we’re at the vet (which has been happening much to frequently lately, by the way). The other day while I was reading on the porch, she walked up to me, turned around, and just casually plopped herself down on my lap and acted like it was just the most normal thing that could ever happen. Michelle, of course, felt compelled to photograph it. Beene found the scenario entirely commonplace and saw no need whatsoever for photography. Note the indignance on her face in the last photo.