Free Giant George by Dave Nasser and Lynne Barrett-Lee Page B

similarlyfraught with new dangers. Either he was too stupid to recognize it (which, on past evidence, was unlikely) or too sassy and too quick (
way
more likely, we figured), but a steak on the coals was like a siren to a passing sailor—you didn’t dare turn your back for one minute or he’d have the meat off and away like lightning, and he’d have devoured most of it before you could tell him, “Hey! That’s
hot
!”
    Nothing, basically, was off-limits to our dog, so we had to have eyes in the back of our heads. Not only could he reach the counter, he could reach the
back
of the counter—unsurprisingly, since he could get his whole head in the sink. So it wasn’t just a case of moving things out of his reach, but of putting everything away. It was either that or have things up so high on the walls thatChristie couldn’t reach them herself. Once again, we knew this because we tested it out. We were exploring new territory all the time.
    And it wasn’t just food that attracted George’s interest; he’d also developed a passion for the sound of the doorbell. He would have made a perfect recruit for Pavlov—it was textbook conditioning. He’d learned, as puppies do, that the doorbellmeant visitors.And visitors meant new things to smell, and lots of stroking. Visitors meant fun and a whole load of attention. So when the doorbell rang, George jumped—all one hundred and eighty pounds of him—to go see what was up. And when one hundred and eighty pounds of excited dog is on a mission, very little is going to stand in his way.
    He’d also bark like you’d never heard barking before. The biggerhe’d grown, the louder it had become—it now sounded pretty much like a string of sonic booms, and would terrify anyone who heard it. And though this obviously didn’t apply to anyone who knew him for the softie he really was, for those who didn’t, it must have sounded truly awesome. Plus if he made it to the door with you (most of the time, it was
before
you), it was a mammoth job to stop him fromgreeting any visitors into trembling submission, overwhelmed—literally—by his boundless affection and great quantities of flying Georgie-drool. We were beginning to learn that if we were expecting any callers, it made a lot of sense to keep him penned in the bedroom just before they got there, and to let him out only once the doorbell had rung, and the visitors were in the house, prepared forhim.
    We also had to be careful around paper. Georgie was developing a real personality, and it seemed that, if he’d been human, he’d have been office bound, for sure, or, if not, he’d have had a job working at
USA Today
. But it wasn’t just newspaper he loved: George had a mania for any kind of paper. As with steaks and chops, nothing made from wood pulp was safe, as George’s jaws were completelyundiscriminating: magazines, reports, paperbacks, cardboard boxes, shopping bags, toiletpaper, writing paper—he didn’t care. Any and all of these he’d trail all over the house. But his absolute favorite to get his paws around was a roll of paper towels, which would send him into raptures of excitement. We pretty soon decided against the idea we’d had of putting a paper towel dispenser on thewall.
    As well as turning paper into mush, George could also turn heads, which he did every time we went out. And nice though it was at first to have him arouse so much interest, the attention wasn’t always that positive. We started noticing that the jokes were coming thick and fast: “Is that a horse?” and “Hey, do you have a saddle for that thing?” If we heard it once, we heard it a dozen times.And everyone, of course, thought they were being real smart, like we’d never heard any of these wisecracks before. It was getting a bit tiresome, but then it was pretty understandable too. You took George out, and people noticed him. People stared.
    Much less pleasant was the flip side of this attention when we were out. It soon became