Last week we bid farewell to our backyard neighbours and their skittish German Shepard, Lucy. The funny thing about Lucy was how she was afraid of Budman. Lean Lucy was three times Budman’s size and, despite her girlish figure, had, I’m guessing, 60 pounds to his measly 11. Image is everything. Faking it is a key factor in life. My dog seems to understand this. Fear-aggression is all about being a fake. The l’il rat terrier thinks he’s 7 feet tall and 200 pounds of rippling muscle. It’s all in how you fake it. I know I’m to blame for that because, as the adage goes, it’s like person like doggie. I pretend to be a five-foot-six blonde goddess with a shapely ass that puts Sting’s tight little Yoga naked butt to shame.

Thanks for that pic Annie Leibovitz!

Mmmm Sting…Sigh….

Um…what was I about to say?

Oh, yes. Faking it. Budman’s all front. All noise. All darting quick movement and flashing teeth. This is especially so now since my new backyard neighbour’s have a dog. His name is Elvin Elvie.  A new dog, one who is not timid Lucy, means Budman has now become the size of Optimus Prime in his own mind.

The thing is, where Lucy was lean, Elvin Elvie is a muscled mass of dog bodybuilder and he has, I’m sorry, I have to say this because it’s just so OUT THERE, an enormous schwanzschtucker. I’m talking the biggest I’ve ever seen on a dog his size. Of course there was Walter the Basset hound who possessed a set of the most impressive dogie nuts I’ve ever seen, but this is about Elvie.  I estimate this Bull Terrier weighs more that I do. Like Lucy, he’s also skittish and afraid, but not of Budman the Not-so-Big Fat Faker.

Elvie is terrified of crying babies. Our new neighbours have two children, one 15 months, the other 3. When the wee one cries. Elvie runs.

Well, Elvie barrels really.

Barreling Elvie whimpers and leaps at the cyclone fence that divides our properties. Elvie, snorting like a asthmatic pig, keeps whimpering and leaping at the fence until he’s made it over the metal structure. Then, in the next moment, while Budman is doing his best impersonation of a 11 pound, tri colour, Raging Rhino–from the safety of inside the house–Elvie is snorting and whimpering and leaping at my side gate. Before I can make it down the back steps to grab his harness, the one I see has a length of broken chain hanging from it, he’s hauled his muscled frame over the gate and run off down the street.

You may wonder what all of this has to do with writing. Really. It’s not hard to make this connection. As a writer I have quite a vivid imagination, or as Shirky puts it, "a rich inner world." To be honest, for the past 10 years the two things I have worried about when it comes to my dinky 11 pound dog are carpet pythons and cane toads because both creatures could kill Budman in just a couple of minutes. I’ve had those awful imaginings that my Little Wind-up dog would wind up…do ya really need me to go into detail? Now, thanks to Shrinky and Elvie, I get to add Budman’s biting it by Bull Terrier (Staffordshire Bull Terrier that is) to my occasional flights into my rich inner world. My writer’s mind goes into overdrive on this one. I was home today when Elvie launched himself over the fence, but what if I hadn’t been? Crying baby = fear for Elvie. Foreign dog in his backyard = fear-aggression for Budman. Oh, the scenes my writerly brain has come up with are just too horrible–and that’s not including the scenes where I step in to save Napoleon Budman and wind up with my throat torn out by Elvie.

You see, not only does Elvie out-weigh me, he out-muscles me too. I’m no match for him anymore than Budman is. It’d be chomp, chomp, chomp for Oldbitey. Still, if something happened, if babies cried and Elvie vaulted the fence again when Budman was in the backyard, I know my inner Napoleon would rise up. I’d move my bony anti-ass to come to the rescue. I’d dive right into the frightened dogfight…

And then, as my new neighbours put up a higher, Elvie vaulting-proof fence, Sting would visit me in the hospital as I recuperate.

P. S. Thanks, Swellanor, for letting me Gloom & Doom all over you today about Budman.