Worst Dog / Best Dog

Bubalou is the worst dog. In addition to the puking, peeing, and noisy separation anxiety that he unleashed on us as soon as we got him, we have discovered quite a few new annoying habits over the last few years.

He's an escape artist, able to leap tall chain-link fences in a single bound. I thought having a house with a fenced yard would be an improvement over an apartment, because I could let the dogs run around in the yard unsupervised. But no, you have to keep your eye on Bubalou every moment he's outside, because when he gets in the mood for a stroll in someone else's yard, he's gone in an instant.

He also loves to eat dirty clothes. The way we discovered this was a mystery story. Early on in our ownership of him, we once found a puddle of vomit with what appeared to be a striped cloth in it. Where that had come from, we had no idea. Until a week or so later when, folding laundry, I found one of my boyfriend's shirts, made of striped fabric, with a great gaping hole in it. We figured this was some weird manifestation of Bubalou's separation anxiety—when one's favorite human is absent, one must eat his clothing out of desperation? But apparently, it was not just limited to Al's shirts. When we moved to the new house, I started finding my underwear ripped to shreds in the wash. I thought they were snagging on something in the machine, until one day I found a similarly destroyed pair of panties sitting on the couch, next to a telltale pile of chewed-up food wrappers (stolen from the recycling bin, of course). Apparently, Bubalou's clothing-munchies go not just beyond Al's shirts, but beyond a separation-anxiety thing, too. Leave him unsupervised in a room with a laundry hamper, even if you're just down the hall, and you can return to find him gnawing on his latest sartorial snack.

Shortly after we got him, I mentioned how much Bubalou was costing my boyfriend. Well, the expenses certainly haven't decreased. Between the training, emergency vet bills, and medications for him, not to mention all the property we've lost to his clothes-eating habit, Al calls him the "11,000 dollar dog." While I don't know how accurate that figure is, I can say for certain that I myself dropped $4,300 to help him survive a cardiac condition in July, so I'm sure it's pretty close. This special-needs beastie makes my ex-rabbit's vet bills look like pocket change!

So yeah. If I had to give out a prize for the worst dog, I would give it to Bubalou. But if I were to give out a prize for my favorite dog, guess who I'd give it to. Bubalou! In spite of his innumerable negative traits, he has somehow managed to charm his way into my heart with proportionately more endearing ones.

Yeah, I'll admit that some of his appeal is due to nothing more than his cuteness. I've told him many a time (though I get the feeling he's not listening!) that he hit the genetic jackpot when it comes to his looks. With his cloud of ginger fur, his expressive face, warm dark eyes, and perennial smile, he just looks like the physical embodiment of happiness!
 

But I'd like to think that I'm not so superficial that I only like him because of his baby face. At least some of it can be attributed to his adorable personality.

Bubalou is, among the many names I've given him, Cuddle Dog.* He is thusly dubbed because, more than any other dog I've known, he seems to be most comfortable on or immediately next to a human lap. When I come home from work and sit down on the couch, it is usually not long before I have a Cuddle Dog jumping up to join me. He loves cuddling at any time, but it's especially pronounced when he's nervous. Kneel or sit down when there is a crowd, thunderstorm, or groomer in the vicinity, and you will have a lapful of fur before you can say lickety-split!

Bubalou also likes to cuddle when you're mad at him, which I assume is nature's way of keeping you from killing him. No matter what he does wrong, it only seems to make him cuter. Unlike Jack Jack, who has actually become much more manageable since Bubalou joined the family but irritates me with his cowardly reactions when he does mess up, Bubalou seems to think that the best way to atone for his errors is to shower you with more love! Either that or he's too stupid to realize that he's erred at all (I would not put that past him). But regardless of the reason, it's hard to be mad at him when his reaction to your anger is to rush towards you with a giant smile on his face and his entire hindquarters wiggling. The worse you feel, the closer he tries to be—it seems he was born to be a therapy dog.

Bubalou seems to always want to please you. Even if he's too dumb to figure out how, and even if he works himself into a fit of anxiety trying to do it right, he's ultimately trying. I appreciate him for that honest attempt, even if it always ends in failure.

Obviously, my intention from the beginning was to distance myself from him as much as possible, since he was an unsanctioned addition to my household. But even more obviously, that resolution didn't stick. I've given up on calling him Al's dog and now just call him our dog. I am pretty much an unabashed Dog Mom on Facebook, posting nothing but pictures of my baby doing those silly things that no one loves quite as much as the person who posts them.

As I was just trying to wrap up the writing of this post, the ever-restless Bubalou wandered up to my desk to stare at me with his usual happy face. I gave him a little head-pat before turning away to finish typing when, without warning, he upchucked on my floor.

And this is how I know I love him. The dog is disgusting, but I'm not even mad. I just resignedly wiped up the vomit and gave him another head-pat. Sometimes you have to take the bad dog with the good dog.

Since there is no such thing as too many cute dog pictures, here are some more shots of Bubalou that I never got around to oversharing on Facebook.

Jack Jack is jealous there isn't room for two.

Making it really difficult for me to do yoga.

I give up.

Taking a walk during the solar eclipse.
Notice the crescent shapes in the leaf shadows!

*Since I didn't have Bubalou when I wrote my Pet Names post, you never learned his other nicknames, which include: Cuddles, Bubbles, Buba-roo (for his kangaroo-like jumping), Bubba, Bubby, Bubs, Bub, Li'l Bub (stolen from the Internet cat), Happyface Dog, Anxiedog (as in "anxiety"), Yapper (shared with Jack Jack), Puffball, Puffboy, Puffer, Bubble Puff, and Puff Puff.