{"id":1284,"date":"2014-03-10T05:30:58","date_gmt":"2014-03-10T15:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grumpyseniors.com\/?p=1284"},"modified":"2014-03-09T16:36:53","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T02:36:53","slug":"the-bear-on-the-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grumpyseniors.com\/?p=1284","title":{"rendered":"The Bear on the door"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bear-1\"<\/a>This is from the time of my career in the political side of life.<\/p>\n

It’s the story of Bear.<\/p>\n

Bear was\u00a0a dog\u00a0owned by Mayor Jeremy Harris and his wife.<\/p>\n

A long time ago our Maltese had five puppies.<\/p>\n

That’s a lot of puppies so after the suitable waiting period we started looking for some good homes for a few of them.<\/p>\n

You know what a hot item a cute Maltese can be.<\/p>\n

The Mayor’s wife really, really wanted one.<\/p>\n

The Mayor waffled – I kept telling him they were going fast – and he waffled some more.<\/p>\n

One went to my sister, one to the wife’s friend and one to her brother.<\/p>\n

The fourth went to a federal firefighter and his family.<\/p>\n

We kept the fifth.<\/p>\n

Thirty minutes after the firefighter left with number four the Mayor calls asking if he could get one for his wife.<\/p>\n

Sorry sir, the boat sailed.<\/p>\n

Out of time and out of luck the Mayor turned to a newspaper ad and probably paid a bazillion dollars for one male Maltese puppy for his wife.<\/p>\n

So why this story?<\/p>\n

Because this was the craziest dog ever to walk the Earth.<\/p>\n

His wife took him everywhere: meetings, dinners, city events, campaign events.<\/p>\n

You name it and Bear was along tucked in a bag under her arm.<\/p>\n

That’s a lot of stimulation for an 8-week old puppy.<\/p>\n

Bear grew up to be loud, boisterous and a real handful.
\nHe would make a perfect politician.<\/p>\n

I ended up babysitting him when they went out-of-town.<\/p>\n

I liked Harris and his wife and was glad to help out, but…<\/p>\n

Oh my God.
\nThat dog loved to bark.<\/p>\n

All day.
\nAll night.<\/p>\n

And at night he also loved to jump up on the bed, pace around and walk all over me.<\/p>\n

He was a handful and he made me real grumpy.<\/p>\n

Squirt guns didn’t work – rattling coins in a can didn’t work.
\nNothing worked.<\/p>\n

I went to the Humane Society to see what it could do.<\/p>\n

They gave me a collar that you fill with this liquid.<\/p>\n

When Bear barked, the collar squirted out some gassy thing that really smelled bad.<\/p>\n

I put it on Bear and waited.<\/p>\n

It didn’t take long before he ripped a loud one.<\/p>\n

The collar went off, he looked surprised as hell and barked again.<\/p>\n

Cloud number two.<\/p>\n

He shut up for\u00a0about two days before he learned to bark and then run like hell for the other side of the room leaving the smelly cloud behind.<\/p>\n

\"Bear-on-the-door3\"<\/a>Now what to do…<\/p>\n

I won’t go into how we discovered this, but we stumbled on the one thing that made the dog quiet.<\/p>\n

He actually\u00a0loved it.
\nWanting to make him happy\u00a0that’s where he spent the majority of his time.<\/p>\n

There’s some moral in here somewhere but I’m too lazy to figure it out.<\/p>\n

Share this:<\/h3>