I’m looking at the dog in the mirror by Foley Monster

When I saw Zoe Boe’s Mom’s drawing of yours truly dressed as the so called King of Pop I decided to learn more about the her inspiration and wiped out my Daddy’s I Tunes account by downloading his music.

There was a song that struck a chord with your Mini-Monster of Pop. Mr. Jackson sings that he wants to make the world a better place and will do so by starting with the man in the mirror. I would like to make the world a better place, and I am starting with the dog in the mirror.

1. I will not attack Pocket without just cause.

Provided we all agree that her breathing is just cause.

2. I will not be possessive of my Mommy’s lap and share it with others.

Provided she gains about 300 pounds so there is plenty of lap for everyone.

3. I will no longer tell embarrassing stories about my Daddy

Like this one: On the Fourth of July Daddy went to the Red Sox game and Mommy went to her brother’s house in Plymouth for a cookout. Well, Daddy got home first. The day before Mommy was sad because she was trying to convert the computer room to a spare bedroom for the grandbabies and not making much progress so Daddy thought it would be a good thing if he helped by bringing my human brother’s abandoned day bed from the basement to the second floor.

It wasn’t.

Pocket and I were at the cellar door listening as Daddy got his tools and went into the basement. The first swear word came in thirty seconds when he couldn’t find the light switch and walked into the bed. Then he yelled when he pinched a finger between the spring and the frame, dropped the headboard on his foot, had the side of the bed crash on his head, and when he found the final bolt that connected the bracket to the box spring was stripped.

“It’s stripped!” Daddy yelled. “It’s stripped, it’s stripped, it’s stripped, the $%#$#%# thing is stripped!”

“What’s wrong?” Pocket asked.

“It’s stripped,” I guessed.

Then Daddy began to bring the bed upstairs. We have stairs that go up, turn, and double back with two landings which is nice when you’re a dog because you don’t have that long stairway straight down, but when you’re moving a bed, by yourself, and don’t have an SAT score because you got the day of the test wrong, it is a bad thing when you make the turn to go up the stairs, and scratch the paint with the other end of the headboard, or knock down a picture, or, ooops, there goes the CD tower, oh look, Tom Waits, it is a bad thing.

Then Daddy wanted to bring up the box spring with the one bracket still on. He got it around one corner, then the second, and then there was a slam, and the bad words started. And then lots of banging as the entire building shook and Pocket and I ran upstairs and hid under the bed. It seemed like forever that there was continually banging and swearing and then the phone rang, and Daddy answered it. It was Mommy and he told her in a small defeated voice that he had got the head board stuck in the stairway. I stuck my head around the open cellar door and saw that Daddy had somehow got one corner of the bed jammed about three inches into the plaster in the wall opposite the doorway, it’s opposite corner splitting a hole in the rug beneath the lip of the third step from the top, the corner with the bracket jammed under the slanted roof, and on the other wall several gouges where Daddy had tried rocking the spring back in forth.

“Oh my gosh Daddy broke the cellar,” Pocket said.

We could hear Mommy yelling at him through the phone. I got the screw driver in my mouth and Pocket the wrench and we climbed up the head board and worked together and took off the bracket then eased the box spring upstairs while Daddy was curled in a ball whining to Mommy. By the time he hung up we had it upstairs. Of course when Mommy got home he took all the credit. But when she saw the cellar, he got all the yelling too.

4. I will not longer hump my Daddy’s arm.

Please let me take a moment to explain. While we lay in bed, or when Daddy is on the floor and his arm is on Mommy’s recliner, I stand over his arm, wrap my forelegs around his wrist, my back legs below his elbow, then press down my delicate parts and I hump. Mommy says it’s disgusting. Daddy says it is part of our breed characteristics, that, when we were ratters in our working days, that we would subdue the rats by grasping them in our forelegs and humping it.

Daddy has a very idyllic worldview. Perhaps he thought that my forefathers would chase down a rat, catch it, and then gently hump it to death. “Ah, look at Foley humping that rat,” the farmer would say after my ancestor caught a varmint. “Rat looks rather happy to die. You know, that’s the way I want to go, being gently humped by a Yorkie, just like me Mom.”

Mommy gets very upset if I hump Daddy in the bed. She tells him to make me stop, and he swats me in the behind, but I’m so into it I think: “Cool. Foreplay!” Then I start barking “Whose my Daddy? Whose my Daddy?” while he’s swatting me until Mommy yells at me to stop and I have to dismount.

Anyway, I’m looking at the hump at the mirror and I am planning to dismount. No more humping.

Starting tomorrow.