So Pepper gets potty trained.  I am always VERY on top of the potty training thing, and I do not tolerate ANY mess or any puddle (no matter how small).  The dog knows this and thus we have a nice clean house.

Now for the weird part.  Sometime years back, Pepper somehow acquired this odd fear of me during dinner time.  I honestly have no idea how this happened.  I never punished her around her food or anything.  It is just some strange phobia the dog developed.  Here's the picture:  every day after we eat dinner (around 7 or 8), we would put her portion of dog food (mind you we get her really good dog food - dogs are supposed to appreciate that- the little ingrates) in her bowl.  Then, she would just sit there with her ears pulled back and look at me, as if she thought I was going to shoot across the room and beat the hell out of her if she dared touch her food.  To this day, Pepper still phases in and out of this strangeness.  Some days she doesn't mind me at all, and eats her dinner just fine.  Other days she is extra weird (hey, when is the last time you used the phrase “extra weird”?).  Occasionally my wife Julie leaves town for her job for a few days.  Pepper WILL NOT eat while Julie is gone.  Ok.  That's fine with me.  I guess Pepper is trying to “teach me a lesson” or something?  Or maybe she's trying to lose a few pounds?  Julie went on one of these business trips a few weeks ago.  Pepper didn't eat or drink for almost 3 days - despite me putting the food down every evening, then putting the food away before I went to bed so the ants wouldn't come in.  Right now you may be thinking “what a weird dog?” - believe me, I think that daily.

Here's the next wonderful thing about Pepper.  I swear I'm not trying to be gross.  You have no idea how much I wish I was making this up.  Here it goes:  Pepper likes to not only eat her own poop, she has become quite the connoisseur of other animals' feces as well.

Picture this:  A few years ago we decided to bring Pepper (for the first time) with us on a trip up to Ohio.  We get to my parent's house, say our hellos, etc., and eventually end up in the back yard.  It was a real nice summer day.  We thought Pepper might enjoy running around in the back yard, seeing the other animals and such.  I thought this.  Silly me.  I had no idea of Pepper's secret doggy agenda.

We actually were not in the back yard for more than a few minutes and Pepper bullets, I mean hauls ASS straight to the horse pasture.  I rarely see Pepper move this fast.  I didn't scream at her to come back because the horses (at the time my parents had two of them) were on the far side of the pasture.  I slowly jogged over to the pasture to see what Pepper's interest was - I was a bit worried she might dash over to the horses, spoof them, and get either get stomped and become a permanent part of the ground, or get punted over the house and into the far vineyard (Remember that old Disney movie with Gus the horse that kicked football field goals?).  To my mild and fleeting relief, Pepper wasn't charging the horses.  But what I saw next put me in a state of disbelief.  You hear people use the word “disbelief”, but sometimes they just use it.  I honestly was, for one of the few times in my life, in disbelief.  I had this numb feeling in my body (sort of).  What happened was I was watching something, and it took a few moments for my brain to register that this was ACTUALLY HAPPENING.  Once I snapped out of it (literally) I SCREAMED “Pepper NO!”.

I watched, for a good 15 seconds, Pepper dine on horse “nuggets”.  You may know that horse poop does not stink like cow or pig poop (isn't this great information?  I LOVE IT when I am able to degrade my writing down to the “talking about poop” level), BUT, I've never thought that it smelled good enough to eat.  Well, my little doggie obviously thought otherwise.  Pepper managed to gulp down about three golf-ball-sized chunks of horse crap.  All in a severe hurry, like dogs normally eat.  Pepper weighs about 10 pounds - she's not a very big animal.  So be it known, that at least once in her lifetime, Pepper has had a belly full of horse poo.  This was not a little taste.  This was a gluttonous gorging.  This was an entire meal.

I walked into the house not sure if I should tell the story.  I do recall asking my mother if they saved a lot of money on dog food.

Think about this:  This...eating...this...meal...whatever it was, was the FIRST thing Pepper thought to do on her vacation.  I have never fully recovered from the amount of disgust I felt towards Pepper after witnessing her filling up on horse manure.

Occasionally I look out in our back yard here in Tulsa and see Pepper eating either her or Basil’s old, dried-up terds.  Apparently they age nicely and acquire a delicate taste after drying out in the sun for a few days that only a discerning dog can appreciate.

I must then storm out into the back yard, call Pepper to the scene of the crime, I mean the scene of the meal, and administer a hearty beating.  After which we go inside for the mandatory tooth-brushing.  Pepper does NOT like this, I assure you.  But how, for the love of God, can I NOT do something about her breath?  One of these days I need to go to a local pet store and see if they have the book “How To Teach Your Dog Not To Eat Its Own Poop”, if there is such a book.

Somehow, after all this, I emerge the “bad guy” - go figure.  I get these looks from Pepper like “Look what you did to me, you big meanie”.  I’m supposed to feel bad?  Me?

I had no idea dogs were so…complicated.  And gross.  I frequently ask Pepper when we’re going to play “Fun To Own”.  I’m tired of playing Pepper’s favorite game “Embarrassed To Own”.

I have so many stories about this small, four-legged discomfiture that I could keep on writing and writing.  To use Jeff Daniel's character's line (almost) from the movie “Dumb & Dumber”:  Once I think Pepper has gone and done the grossest thing in her life, she goes and completely redeems herself.
 

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