My Dog, the Democrat

For those of you who don’t know, I have a dog whose name is Ali. I adopted Ali about three and a half years ago and he’s been my constant companion ever since. I was raised in a family that treats their pets as just short of human which basically means they don’t eat at the table but their names make it into the list of those that get run through when my dad is trying to get someone’s attention. (“Duncan…uh, Paco, I mean um…Brian or…whoever you are, get over here.”) I don’t think there was more than a week of my life growing up in which we didn’t have two dogs. I was out of Harding and therefore eligible to have a pet for about 5 weeks when I adopted Ali; I just couldn’t take living without a dog any longer.

Some dogs I’ve had have just been pets. You love the dog because, well, it’s yours but there’s not just a whole lot that differentiates this dog from any other dog. You feed them, pet them, throw a ball every once in a while but in some ways they’re just a part of the house. But I’ve also owned (or known) a lot of dogs who had character and, for lack of a better term, personality.

Ali is one of those dogs. He’s got a lot of personality that separates him from other dogs I’ve owned. You might even say he’s a bit quirky. When I first got him I bought a $70 bed which he promptly ignored in favor of crawling under my bed, army style. When someone leaves the house he does The Spin Dance, which sees him spin around madly while barking loudly and violently. We’ve often referred to him as the Cave Dog because at any given time during the day he can almost always be found holed up under something. A table, a chair, someone’s legs, it doesn’t really matter; he just wants to be in a cave. Ali doesn’t bark at everything the way some small dogs do but when he does bark after something, he usually runs over to me with a big dog-smile to show me how proud he is of himself. He hates to be picked up, is somewhat racist, and loves to ride in the car more than a PE teacher loves dodgeball. And, as I’ve noted before, he is quite fat, especially on his left side which kind of weirds me out.

These idiosyncrasies shined through once again a couple of weeks ago when we hosted a surprise birthday party for Lindsey’s sister Kim and her husband John. Lindsey has these cardboard cutouts of President George W. Bush and Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz” that make an appearance at most of our little shindigs. Lindsey will print out pictures of the honored guests’ faces and stick them on the cutouts. This party being no exception, President Bush and Dorothy stood in our entry way for about 18 hours before we began the real after-party clean up process.

While Ali stood quietly eating in our kitchen, I folded up Dorothy and then stepped away for a second to watch the Rangers blow yet another lead (seriously, I hate you CJ Wilson). Suddenly I heard some growling from the kitchen and looked in to see Ali staring straight ahead with teeth shown and tail raised. I couldn’t figure out what was going on and then he started barking and slowly backing away under the table (you know, because he’s a Cave Dog). I started looking around and finally figured out that he was barking at George. I brought George a little closer to the kitchen and the barking and scurrying increased. Clearly, Ali was terrified by the “man” standing in the kitchen.

Like any good dog owner would do I decided to torture him a little. I picked up Ali and brought him closer to George so that he could see that it was, in fact, only a 5 foot tall cardboard cutout of the man, not an actual former president hanging out in our house. Ali promptly peed on me and snapped at George. I put him down and he ran full tilt into the bedroom and into his closet, barking the whole way. It should be noted that because of his weight running is not one of Ali’s skills but man did he put up a valiant effort on this occasion.

The really crazy thing about this occurrence was not that Ali freaked out over an inanimate object. This sort of thing has happened before. Once I found him barking ferociously as a pile of laundry that was stacked on the washing machine, a black fleece stretched out over the top, giving the appearance of a weirdly shaped headless man. No, the weird thing is that, as I mentioned, George had been standing in the entry way for somewhere around 18 hours when Ali finally picked up on his presence. The second I removed Dorothy (and her little dog, too) from the equation Ali suddenly saw George for the first time. So basically should an intruder enter our home with the intent to immediately inflict some sort of harm, Lindsey and I are lacking in dogs that can alert us to his presence. On the plus side, though, if anyone decides to break in and perform some sort of long term sneak attack, we’re well covered.

I put George in the front guest room. The next day we were in that room talking and Ali wandered in like he usually does. (He likes to be where the people are. There’s a better chance of someone giving him food that way.) For a minute every thing was fine. Then suddenly, as if George had materialized out of thin air, Ali realized we were not alone. There on the ground laid President George W. Bush, bent in half, half smiling up at him. Ali flipped out. He started barking and growling while Spin Dancing his way out of the room and into safety. I picked up George and unfolded him, held him up in the doorway, and stuck my head out just in time to see Ali take off for the bedroom. A minute later I found him in the back of his closet, still barking.

I can come to but one conclusion from these experiences. My dog is a Democrat, and a hardened one at that. I don’t really consider myself to be a Republican because the real term for my political beliefs is probably Apathetic. But I confess my leanings are probably more towards the Republican side than anywhere else. My family members are Republicans and I would guess that most of the people I hang out with are closer to Republicans than Democrats. This puts Ali in the minority but he’ll obviously be darned if he’ll go down without making his political views known. Perhaps he tried his best to keep quiet for as long as he could or perhaps he felt it best to display outward unity with the President until he was out of office as a show of solidarity and strength. Maybe he just likes the similarity between his name and the name of our new president, I don’t really know.

Either way, I expect this to have an impact on our relationship. One of his more excited barks sounds remarkably close to, “Yes we can” and I’m pretty sure he was watching “An Inconvenient Truth” the other day while I was out of the room. Still, Ali remains my dog and I imagine our friendship can withstand this new voicing of beliefs. Just as long as he steers clear of Michael Moore. That crap will find him a permanent spot in the backyard.

I’d prefer it if he’d just play poker,
Brian