The Dog Days of Bummer

The humans could be evil.

They could promise him one thing, and then the next second turn their backs and cruelly betray him, leaving him with nothing but a broken heart. They never understood. They didn’t know what it was like to live each day with high hopes of fulfillment, only to have it crushed countless times.

He had such a cheerful disposition and a positive outlook on life. A way of blocking out those negative moments with dreams of cheerfulness. Even when those cruel humans gave him sheer heck, everything short of severe discomfort, he kept his young little head high.

Like all of those times when they acted like they had tennis balls in their hands and made like they were going to throw it. He had gone long and ran after the imaginary ball, but came back with nothing. Nada. Zilch. But fool me once, shame on you – fool me twice, shame on me! He had fallen for that a million times before he caught on to the humiliation he was causing himself.

Or all those times when hordes of humans he’d never seen before were crowded around him, while his Master stood miles taller than him, laughing and holding a can of beer in a calloused hand. In his other hand the Master dangled a delicious treat above him, tantalizing him in beautiful waves of the scent of bacon and beef. His mouth watered at the sight of it. Peering upward the best he could, he could clearly make out the cartoonish bone shape of his prize, coffee-colored and juicy and oh man, he just wanted it so bad.

And when he stood up to try and retrieve it, his cruel Master only lifted it higher from what little reach he had. With his short little stubby paws preventing him from getting what he desired so badly, his mood dropped. The fact that a dachshund had a more elegantly appealing torso than him didn’t help, either.

He sought retribution. One of these days, he thought. The plans of revenge rolled around in his head like he would to scratch a stubborn itch on his back. Day after day, he sulked in his bed, curled up in a crescent of ideas, desperately attempting to formulate a foolproof plan to put his cursed yet loving Master through all the shame he had to go through.

Fluffy was sick of it.

Fluffy was sick of being an attention spot for all of the humans that passed through the house to visit his Master.

Fluffy was sick of spending each day doing little more than chomping on meat-flavored pellets and fetching rotten baseballs.

Fluffy was sick of living in that little groove he’d created for himself. (And by “little groove,” I do not mean the groove he created in his bed.)

His time was coming. Soon.

But for the time being, he rested his dark chocolate eyes as he lay in the comforting warmth of his bed. Vengeance could take a break if it meant catching up on sleep.

The Master, however, did not care for Fluffy’s incredible want for peace and quiet.

He kicked the young Corgi’s bed softly, only nudging the dog from his sleep. Bending down and putting his weight on his knees, the man snickered with the wickedest little crooked smile Fluffy’d ever seen. And yet, to Fluffy, that smile seemed to ooze something else – something he’d grown accustomed to. Was it love? Early on, yes. But what was it now? Fluffy was not completely sure.

There was a part of him that still loved his Master. As Fluffy was taught, love your human even if he dresses you up in awful Christmas sweaters for the yearly family photos.

Did Fluffy know this? Yes. He did. If there was anything he knew like the back of his frosty white paw, Fluffy knew that his Master loved him. If he did not, he would have left him rolling around in the shelter cage amongst a squirming huddle of other puppies, stepping in his own poop.

But Fluffy also knew something else, and he had learned it from the hair metal his Master blasted from his CD player on a regular basis: Love worked in mysterious ways.

“Is that all you’re gonna do all day?” the Master asked innocent Fluffy, furrowing his dark eyebrows together to cause a deep wrinkle on his forehead. “All you do is sleep, man…”

Fluffy squinted at his Master, slowly becoming conscious. The dog yawned long and wide, upsetting him and making him stagger backwards.

The Master waved his hands in front of his face rapidly as if trying to dispel a poisonous gas that had just been released in the house. “Shoot, Fluffs! You been eatin’ your own crap again?”

Fluffy snorted. The last time he’d eaten his own feces was a year ago. He was well grown out of that. It was such an elementary thing to Fluffy that he almost laughed in his Master’s face. Then he decided it wasn’t good to act on impulses.

“Well,” the Master went on, that troll smirk growing back upon his features like a bad case of chicken pox, “I’m gonna be glad to let you know that you have a friend visiting today.”

Fluffy’s wide and fuzzy ears perked up like satellites picking up a signal. A friend? The only other dogs Fluffy ever saw were the ones he came into contact periodically on walks. And his Master only took him walking once a day! He stared at him in deep wonder, growing happily excited at the news. A friend!

His Master stood up, still cackling a little bit. He scratched at the greasy, unkempt hair underneath his Atlanta Braves baseball cap, shaking his head. Fluffy couldn’t care less if his clothes were days old (he could smell them from his cozy bed) – his hopes were too darn high for him to care.

Another doggy! Or maybe a cat? Woof! Who knows? Fluffy thought. I can’t wait!

But poor little Fluffy hardly had time to lick his whiskers before his hopeful thoughts were extinguished by the sound of a switch flipping on, following with the terrifying hollow noise of suction.

Oh, no.

Not today.

No…anything but this…

A deep whine escaped Fluffy’s constricted throat. Never in a million years would he have expected his Master to so blatantly lie to him like this – to just tell him one thing that skyrocketed his hopes so much, and within the same breath crush them like a coffee grinder.

The monster. That evil monster that sucked things into oblivion, into black holes that Fluffy couldn’t even wrap his miniscule paws around. It tore through the home with fierce motivation to ruin lives and terrify anything that stood in its way. The black plastic base with its glowing red eyes peering Fluffy right in the soul, the underbelly where all the dust and small creatures were eaten, the dust bag that inflated to scary volumes.

And worst of all…oh, worst of all – the tubes. Oh god, the tubes.

Fluffy hated the tubes worst of all.

But alas, all he could do at the moment was whine and curl up into a ball of Corgi with his ears pressed to his head. The monster was alive – his Master had awoken him from the deep slumber in that eerily dark cave known as The Hall Closet. And most unsettling of all, Fluffy knew that he was powerless – a mere mortal in the presence of a beast that should have been tamed long ago.

The Master had the monster in his hand with laughter erupting from his beer belly, seeping out from the scraggly five-o-clock shadow that covered his neck. Fluffy’s fears were coming true, and all he could muster up was a little bark, but alas, no bite. And that monster was getting closer.

Closer.

Agonizingly close.

And at a devilish rate.

His master, wielding the monster in one hand, reached down and unfurled Fluffy’s absolute worst enemy of all – the TUBE. That slithery, sucking, slippery serpent that the young dog had no clue how to defeat. All he could do was close his eyes and cry as his Master poked him with the breathing end of the tube, inhaling layers of fur that remained in clumps long after he let go.

Fluffy was used to this. It happened once or twice a year whenever his Master pulled out the monster from The Hall Closet. That didn’t mean in any way, shape, or form, that Fluffy enjoyed it. No, he loathed it with a passion. It was unnerving. He was just waiting for that one moment when the monster got too powerful and sucked him up whole, taking him into a deep and empty abyss that led nowhere. It hadn’t happened yet. But Fluffy knew in his heart that it was going to.

But something happened to Fluffy at that moment – and it wasn’t him getting eaten by the monster. It was more like something that happened inside of him. Like his heart swelled up with some unknown feeling that cheerful little Fluffy wasn’t used to; like he’d just stumbled upon the world’s biggest reservoir of milk bones.

And Fluffy staggered to his stubby little feet. He perked his ears up and stared his Master down in the eye as he looked on with curiosity at the small animal.

And Fluffy let fly the biggest bark he’d ever mustered up.

His Master cocked his head to the side and held the tube at his side.

So Fluffy barked again – this time, even louder!

“What’s up with you, dog?” the Master asked, perplexed at his puppy’s power.

As if he had fire burning in his soul and newfound courage pumping through his veins, Fluffy eyed the monster once again. The red piercing eyes no longer glared back at him – they only stared.

But Fluffy still noticed the bag – that ever-inflating bag that housed all of the poor creatures that were sucked into its threatening grasp over the years. And he didn’t like it one bit. No, no. And he was all ready and willing to change that.

Fluffy lunged forward, his hind legs propelling him toward the monster. And like a toy soldier wound up to do one thing and one thing only, Fluffy let his jaws loose on the dreaded bag. He ripped and he bit and he tore at the canvas menace that threatened his peace and sanity, trying his gosh darn hardest to finally just rid everyone of all of the pain and suffering that it had caused.

And it felt good. Fluffy finally felt as though he was accomplishing something in his young life. He had just gotten the courage to work up the strength to defeat the evil monster The Hall Closet, ridding the world of its yucky presence once and for all.

And when it was over, when all the dust had settled and only a shred of canvas remained hanging from Fluffy’s proud jaws, and when the awful howling had stopped…Fluffy smiled. He could see that the monster was no more – just a mere skeleton of plastic. No evil left in those bones.

The Master, however, was not nearly as excited.

“Aw, fer cryin’ out loud…Fluffs…” he sighed, groaning in distress. He bent down to pick up the pieces left behind by Fluffy’s tormented wrath, clasping them with bony fingers. “You stupid dog, I swear…”

Fluffy panted and wagged his little bobtail, looking up at his Master. He didn’t care. He’d just defeated the evil monster, and that was all he needed to be happy.

“Shoot…well, looks like I gotta run out and get another one…”