Come on everybody, sing along.  You know the words.

Anyone?

Bueller?

That’s not a song lyric that I know of.  I just wanted to see if I could get the members of the blog reading world to sing along for the sake of singing along.

In the meantime, my beloved pit bull Hope just ran into the bedroom where I’m sitting here on the bed, watching American Chopper on Discovery Channel, and typing up today’s dispatch.  As always, she comes in excited and guns blazin’.  Usually in this case, I put my hand out and growl at her to stop her from mugging me.

Today, things went a little different.

She runs in, throws her 60 lb. frame onto the bed, comes to a complete stop just a matter of inches from me, and burped in my face.

Run, run, run, bank corner, slide into the wall, correct course, run, run, jump…… brake, brake, stop, belch.

I’d like to take a moment out of today’s blog to address the good people at Iams.  For those of you not in the know, Iams is a brand of dog food which has made it’s way in somewhere between 15 and 20 pound increments into the TharpSter compound since Christmas of 2006.

In that time, we’ve sampled the puppy flavor and the adult blend ranging from beef, to chicken, to lamb, to bacon.  Okay, not so much on the bacon.  One can dream though.

Over all, we’ve had pretty good experiences with Iams, and don’t really have any intention of changing brands anytime soon.

To our friends at Iams, please understand that we’re loyal customers.  As such, I feel it only necessary that you consider what I’m about to suggest and treat it with the highest of regard and deepest of consideration.

Iams, I have a new flavor suggestion for you.  It was inspired by the events of just seven paragraphs ago.

Tic-Tac.

‘Nuff said.

Little side note.  For those you who have read my Blockbuster rant, I appear to be hijacking Google searches for “Blockbuster Blue Ticket”.

None the less, this one doesn’t really involve my pending to be estranged relationship with the candy, popcorn, and soda combo whores.  Instead, the surprise appeared in the pilot episode of The Big Bang Theory.

It would seem, ladies and gentlemen, that even though this show is on in syndication about 100 hours a week (I bet that’s a pretty darn good guess), elements of the compound still feel compelled to purchase entire seasons of the show on DVD.  Last night, such a purchase took place and our drawer full of stuff we watch on occasion received a new neighbor in the presence of The Big Bang Theory, Season 1.

Isn’t that wonderful?

For reasons unknown, we started watching the DVD last night and ran across a surprise.  The episode opened with two of it’s characters sitting in a sperm bank pondering a donation.  The motivation was to pick up some extra cash in order to get faster internet speeds in the apartment.  Even though I had seen the pilot several times in syndication, this part of the episode had always been edited out.

Go figure.

Now let’s move on to the edited version of today’s smattering of verbal brilliance.

Are you familiar with “Leave it”?

Don’t bother answering.  By the time you’re done reading today’s dispatch, you’ll have a pretty darn good understanding of the practice.

“Leave it” is a command that Hope learned in obedience training.  The premise is that when she approaches something she’s not to approach, we say “Leave it” to her in a very firm voice.  She subsequently stops her approach and looks us in the eye.  We subsequently praise her verbally for following instructions.

It works quite well on Hope on a variety of stuff she may want to eat, chew on, trash talk, etc.

W-T-F

Training a dog to respond correctly to “Leave it” culminates into a battle of wills between you and the dog.  The first thing you want to do is to leash the dog to a door knob or something that will keep Fido from going too far.  Once your dog is at the end of their leash, you sit on the floor and put a treat on the floor just out of the pooch’s reach.  Stay there with the treat, and every time the dog makes a move for the treat, you say “Leave it”.  When the dog gives up on the treat and looks at you with the WTF look in their eye, you praise them and give them a treat that you have in your hand.

Do not give the dog the treat that’s on the floor.  That’s the one they’ve been told to leave alone, and it will confuse them if you give it up.

So what if the dog manages to get the treat you’ve left on the floor?  What do you do then?

Don’t let them have it.

If they get it, you go into their mouth after it and use your outdoor mean guy voice to impress upon the dog that you are boss, and you are going to win this particular pissing contest and every pissing contest after that.  Remember that you are the boss.

A smart man learns from his mistakes, a wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

So do pit bulls.

One day when I was practicing “Leave it” with both Faith and Hope, Faith had the audacity to grab the treat off the floor.  I didn’t have them tied to a door or anything.  I had just sat them both down in front of me, demanded eye contact, and dropped a piece of doggy crack on the floor in front of them.

Faith is fast, but not fast enough to escape the clutch of my left hand and the thrust of my right hand into her pie hole fishing for crack while receiving a very loud verbal barrage of “Leave it”.  All the while, Hope just sat there staring at me.  From that point on, Hope never challenged me on a “Leave it”.

I guess she doesn’t want to taste my hand while fishing something out.

As I said before, “Leave it” has plenty of good practical applications for dogs when the training is in place.

As I discovered tonight, the benefits and practical applications transcend species as well.

It’s called Fiesta.

In essence, it’s an excuse to party all week at different  events held all over town and is capped off at a parade on Friday.

Among the events and other festivities, San Antonio names El Rey Feo (The Ugly King) to do various ceremonial stuff like knighting various residents with spent kielbasa sticks.

Fiesta.  Big deal.  I know.  I’ve been here over 20 years and have never really participated.

None the less, I tell you about El Rey Feo in order to tell you about El Rey Fido.

El Rey Fido is a take off of this city’s events, and spawns from the Humane Society.  Various companies around town have raised money for them in the last several months, and each one of them nominated their own candidate (canine) or course to run for the position of El Rey Fido.  The winner subsequently represents the Humane Society at events throughout the year.

I had actually considered entering Hope into the running for the contest, however her social graces parallel those of a pit bull in a china shop.

This year’s winner is a big ole boy  (he’s actually pretty young) which looks like he should be digging avalanche survivors from the snow and then tap his collar bound keg in order to keep his rescue from freezing to death.

His owners should be proud.

At the recent coronation for the big pup, it would seem that someone in the audience noticed that the dog may not have been the best representative for the Humane Society.  He obviously got a hold of a local media outlet, and since there were no house fires or car accidents to report that day, the news reported the issue at hand.

El Rey Fido, representative of the Humane Society and owned by an employee of a company who raised and donated a whole lot of money for said charity, is fully intact.

The massive dog has a feature which is quiet obvious on his north side when he’s facing south.

He’s not neutered boys and girls.

Whether you know it or not, adopting a pet from the Humane Society which hasn’t been neutered, spayed, or otherwise encumbered is next to impossible.  We got Faith from the Humane Society, and that was shortly after she had been fixed.

So what do you do about El Rey Fido?

Does the one loudmouth who bitched and griped to the local news get his way?  Come to think of it,  the Humane Society could make a Fiesta inspired event of it and publicly neuter El Rey Fido on the lead float of the Friday’s Parade.

One of the colleges around here has an Oyster Bake during the Fiesta week.  What about…..

No, never mind.

Well actually it was, but that’s under the assumption that you don’t know Hope and understand her to be a plain ole dog.

Naturally, I have a different opinion.

I should warn you at this point that I’m going to use a little bit or coarse language when I summarize the reason for the barking, but understand that it was 3:50 am when it happened.

The bitch wanted out of her kennel.

Technically speaking, that’s probably not correct, because she’s kinda spade.

Spade, spayed, take your pick.

Semantics aside, I’m guessing that Hope woke up in the middle of the night and felt the urge to cop a squat.  Since she was in her kennel and not prone to pee where she sleeps, she used the only way she knows how to alert the human contingent that she wasn’t the only one that should be awake at that very moment.

Why is it that I’m the only one that hears that dog barking in the middle of the night?

If it wasn’t sick and twisted enough for Hope to bark at that time of night / morning, stay tuned.  It gets a little worse.

I’m tired people.

Care to guess why?

I’ll tell you why.

When I woke up to the “Hey I gotta pee” bark, I completely woke up without a hint of morning stupor, dressed for workout, and prepared to take the dog for a walk at approximately 4 o’clock in the morning.

All because the bitch wanted out of her kennel.

But wait, it gets just a little better.

I took her for a one mile walk up and down the street, returned her to her kennel, and then proceeded to the gym in order to put in some early morning cardio.

All because the bitch wanted out of her kennel.

This morning after pulling that stunt, I felt pretty good.  It’s not every morning that I can summon the gumption to git-r-done when it comes to an exercise routine.  I usually do that stuff at night.  I don’t perceive I’ll have the same gumption to do the same thing in the morning, however I’m guessing Hope may have the gumption to bark again at about the same time in anticipation of parlaying her urinary habits into another walk.

Sakes alive, what have I done?

She’s afraid of my guitar.

Come to think of it, you just got two little known facts for the price of one if you didn’t know

that I have and/or play a guitar.

It’s actually been awhile since I picked it up. I learned how to play when I was 12, and have played on and off every since.

*shudders upon realizing it’s been over 30 years*

Anyway, I pulled it out the other night and tuned it up while watching Donald Trump fire Lou Ferigno. Hope was in the room at the time and didn’t really appreciate the newly found concept of resonance when striking your basic G chord.

As I played for awhile and reminded myself on why I didn’t pursue a career in music, Hope took on a certain demeanor reminiscent of those times when we play fetch with Faith and a tennis ball. The ears drooped, her head hung low, and she gave me those sad puppy dog eyes accented with the green aura of her deadly laser vision.

At one point, I was a bit concerned that she would use said laser vision to render my guitar a pile of kindling.

Fortunately she didn’t, and she showed a great deal of gratitude when I put it away.

As an aside, I’ve got to wonder what would happen if I had taken up the bagpipes all those years ago. Makes you wonder if a protective pit bull would defend her master against an aggressive, yet noisy octopus.

If I’ve scheduled the publishing of this blog correctly, today is March 25th.

Today, ladies and gentlemen, is the two year anniversary of the best traffic day this site has ever experienced.

Today marks the two year anniversary in which we got Hope back.

She had been gone for a few weeks, and we had all but given up hope that Hope would return.

Fortunately she did.

So what’s been going on in the last two years, you may ask?

Let me assure you, ladies and gentlemen that a continued examination of The Pit Bull Diaries may not be the trollop through a field of dandelions and daisies that you and I would have hoped it would have been.

In the first year Hope was back, we put her through two sessions of obedience training.  Understand that Hope was not completely culpable in the reasoning behind repeating the class.

We also had an invisible fence installed around the entire compound which keeps both of our dogs safe at home.  That particular device has proven to be worth it’s weight in gold when it comes to warding off evil solicitors, freaking out  people who walk by, and generally keeping the dogs here.

The occasional remote control continued to be sacrificed to the pit bull altar as well.  I don’t mind telling you here and now the I’ve hijacked quite a few Google searches for the term “Uverse remote”.  I’m pretty sure that when people look that one up, they’re looking for how to obtain or program one, and not an accounting on the attraction that various pit bulls have to them.

Things started facing south about a year ago.  I can remember being on staycation last year at this time and noticed a new dynamic with the dogs.  Right around 9:30 am each morning, they would play with each other.  Basic horseplay was involved which usually resulted in a reorganization of the couches in the living room.  Things like that are bound to happen when each of the dogs are banking off of them.  It was my assumption at the time that Faith had completely warmed up to Hope and they had become texting BFFs.  This was a good thing.

One night around the same time, we had just finished dinner and the kids were starting to clean up the kitchen.  Without any provocation that we could initially interpret, Hope attacked Faith.  Faith didn’t fight back, and I was able to break it up as quickly as it had begun.

It gradually got worse though.

It happened again when I had them both out in the front yard while exercising their training and obedience.  Hope had done something right and when I praised her, she got excited and turned it into an attack on Faith.  As I corrected the issue, the neighbor came out and pretty much got the only impression of my beloved pit bull that he would ever need.

We spent the next few months putting rules in place which would mitigate additional attacks.  They seemed to have been born of jealousy, so it was just a matter of eliminating those particular moments.  No problem.

Not.

A few of the attacks which took place in June and July resulted in stitches for Faith around her neck.  Faith then started fighting back.  One time when I was breaking up a fight, my hand got in the way and Faith bit it at the base of the thumb.  Nine months later, the nerve damage in my thumb has just about disappeared, yet remnants of the wound are still there.

Both dogs wear a harness now.  It’s easier to pull them out of a brawl without getting bit.

The rules with these two are more strict now.  They each have a kennel to keep them separated.  When they’re out, they’re highly supervised.  It’s rare they’re out together at the same time unless we are taking them for a walk.  That’s about the only time those two behave when they’re together nowadays while tethered to a leash and a choke chain.

Hope’s aggression appears to be limited to not just Faith alone, but to other animals as well.  She’ll bark at people, and I haven’t ruled out the possibility of her making a move on someone if she feels that any of us in her family are in danger.  As a result, she wears a muzzle when we take her on a walk, or even to the vet.

Speaking of the vet, she hates them too.  The group of people who work there have been instrumental in literally saving her life and making sure she’s healthy.  Regardless, she barks at the doctor and the technician who take care of her on her regular visits.

Even still, that dog is one of my favorites.  She is very loving and fiercely loyal.  She’s responsive to the training and correction we’ve provided, save for the animal aggression.  We continue to work on that, and expect to do so for a long time.

The problem is that we have a couple of dogs who should be the only dog in the house.  The problem is that we don’t want to give either of them up.  We won’t either, until we’ve exhausted every last option to bringing a sense of harmony back to those two.

More to come.

I’d like to think of the number of scars is two and a half.

This is what it’s come to people.  Set a goal to publish a daily blog in what the Mayans predicted to be the shortest year, and coming up with material to fill that goal in the early part of March has become a challenge.

It’s a lazy Saturday.  I worked out earlier, clipped my fingernails, and cleaned out the wax in my ears.  After that, we took our muzzled pit bull to the vet for her regular check up.  As we entered the lobby, we encountered a red nosed pit bull.  Fortunately, I was able to turn away from him before our pit bull Hope could see him.  It’s not that I was worried about the other dog, as much as I was about that fact that Hope is aggressive with other dogs.  Add that to the fact that she hates the vet (who saved her life earlier this year), the environment was ripe for an incident or two.

Later on we dined on nachos for lunch.

Goodfellas was on A&E a little while ago, and now Ocean’s Eleven is occupying the TharpSter 42″.

Now, I’m sitting here pondering whether to write about my scars and whether to label one of them as my favorite.

What has the blogosphere come to?

The concept of speed dating involves a group of willing (and otherwise coerced, bribed, and blackmailed) participants of varying gender (I would guess sometimes not), several tables, and just enough chairs to make a spirited game of musical chairs a winner for everyone.

For those of you not in the know, a mid to large size pit bull barged her way into our life two years ago this month. Since then, that dog has orchestrated a whole new facet of my life adorned with Uverse remotes, challenging flatulence, chewed up hats, training aids, and partially consumed pillows.

We named her Hope, as a companion name for our other dog Faith.

No, we’re not getting a third dog. If we do, I’ll name it something a little less divinely inspired.

How does “Gooch” sound?

Just as an update, Hope has become a challenge in the last year. As she has come into her own mentally, she’s become aggressive to Faith and other animals in general. In those events we have to take on the persona of a pack leader and express to her in the most calm and assertive of manners that we are the boss and she needs to stand down.

For the most part we have to keep the two of them separated in order to avoid a heated argument between Faith and Hope.

We’re still working on the relationship between those two. It’s just going to take some time.

Hope hasn’t been feeling well lately.

The experience of a pit bull losing her lunch has become a genuine assault on the senses as of late. First you hear the rhythmic heaves which serve as a notification to you (the audience) that the next ten minutes of your life is not going to be what you originally expected.

You subsequently rush to her in hopes of getting her outside, but deep down you know that you’re going to be fractions of a second too late. The key indicator there is that juicy sounding splat which follows the heave. That, of course, is the dog food which you had originally hoped would be processed through the other end of her alimentary canal.

The smell quickly follows, and if you’re unfortunate enough to be there with hand on her collar trying to rush her out (you were too late), you’ve seen it too.

Ick.

Had enough on the description about my dog getting sick?

Doesn’t matter. I have.

After a few days too many of continued vomiting and lethargy, we opted to take Hope to the vet.

You guessed it. Blockage.

A whole bunch of it.

Primarily cotton or it’s synthetic equivalent, however there was some red string and plastic in there too.

Surgery has taken place, and she’ll be able to come home on Monday. I’m debating whether to make a diorama out of what was removed.

Where do you put something like that though?

Ironically enough a family member had emergency surgery this week in order to clear a blockage too. I’m pretty sure the excess consumption of cotton from a doggie bed wasn’t involved in that one though.

When I opened mine up, Junior brandished his out of a defensive sense of paranoia that I would make him my first target.

The paranoia was well founded.

A fire fight ensued, primarily composed of carefully aimed shots to the respective crotches of the two of us who were participating.

In her state of genuine concern for her master (me), Hope the Pit Bull launched a charged attack on Junior once I ran out of ammo.  Hilarity then ensued as she chased the 17 year old boy around the living room.  In the meantime, I had reloaded and was popping more shots off at the boy and his crotch as he dodged the Pit Bull.

Merry Christmas everyone!