Free Canine Christmas by Jeffrey Marks (Ed) Page B

sounded easy by comparison, and she still saw the occasional dog allowed into a bad home. Most of her contempt was heaped on “backyard breeders,” the fast buck crowd who'd mate anything and skimp on every step of the process.
    Months later she called me and a brief discussion ensued. The next day, my house had two new owners, and a new philosophy on what made a good living environment. Hobbes and Nietzsche did not like silence. They would whimper, cry, bark, lick themselves compulsively, have total anxiety attacks unless I was watching a movie. I discovered that and was on the phone to Warner cable within the same thirty-second time span, long enough only to check the soothing qualities of the radio. It had none. My guess is the asshole who owned them previously used to turn down the volume of the television before he beat them. I don't know. They can't talk, and the rescuers don't often get complete stories for the orphans they save.
    Other than the minor neurosis, Hobbes and Nietzsche were intelligent and conscientious. Housebreaking took no time (Donna gets most of the credit for that), and all of our schedules seemed to merge without conflict. I would usually work in my study for five or six hours a day, eating breakfast with them, catching a lunch snack by myself. Then we would spend an hour or two at a park. Rain kept us inside, so I'd watch movies or the occasional nature program to keep the boys happy, even though they had been watching television since about eight in the morning.
    Within months, I began noticing odd occurrences: the television remote would be moved and wet, the television was on a different channel than I had put it on, there was mud on the remote, nose prints on the television screen. I set up a video camera on top of the television. It wasn't that it was difficult to figure out; I just didn't believe it. The videotape showed Hobbes and Nietzsche (they took turns) taking the remote off of the entertainment center, carrying it across the room, then hitting buttons with their paws. They weren't real good at changing channels, but they did seem to find nature shows frequently.
    Remotes for the visually impaired worked better. We went through several before we found one they were comfortable with. I started checking on their viewing habits after that. Animal Planet was a big hit. The Discovery Channel. Commercials were tolerated, or ignored while one or both went out to the kitchen for a drink. I considered teaching them to use a snack dispenser that would fill a bowl with potato chips, but I figured that might be extreme. I was the proud parent of two canine couch potatoes.
    We went for walks, played in a nearby park, dined on medium rare New York Strips, green beans, and twicebaked potatoes for dinner. They ate whatever I ate, a mostly balanced diet. Hobbes hit eighty-nine pounds of solid muscle, standing about thirty inches at the shoulder. Nietzsche weighed four pounds less and was two inches shorter, but his chest was broader. Both were healthy, despite the vet's protest over their diet and my misgivings about their television addiction. Eventually the need for television abated but the desire for it remained strong. I could turn it off and no one complained, but an hour later the two of them would have on some program about wildlife in Madagascar.
    Eleven months after my house was taken over by the two precocious curs, Christmastime was fast approaching. It was impossible to spend time at any of the local parks: Hobbes and Nietzsche had a personal comfort thermometer that ranged from sixty-eight to seventy-six degrees Fahrenheit. Thirty degrees and wet didn't cut it. Which meant I was inside with them more frequently when I wasn't working. We had a problem.
    Television does not relax me. It irritates me. Too many commercials, too much drivel, hyperkinetic editing: I'd rather read. If there was something on I wanted to watch, Hobbes would change the channel. If I moved the remote, Nietzsche