The Small Dog Chronicles: Say What?

When thwarted in her simple requests -- more biscuits, additional time to sniff that deliciously stinky spot, will everybody just sit on the couch already -- the small dog pipes up. 

She has a filthy vocabulary. Swears like a sailor, which is to say that the apple does not fall too far from the tree. 

Denied what's owed her, she'll snort, "Where's my #$%ing biscuit?!"  Sometimes it's just, "Mother-#@#s!" when we don't -- you know -- recognize her needs.    

When particularly exasperated, she does an open-mouthed loud breathing reminiscent of the non-vocal communications of teenagers.

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Like a teen, she relies heavily on sarcasm. The set of her ears will proclaim, "Yeah, right," when told that we will be right back. 

The small dog is a rare barker, though when she does speak, it's a deep, resonant sound for such a diminutive creature. Mostly, she uses an eloquent variety of sneezes, snorts, huffs, and sighs to communicate. 

There are at least three kinds of sighs: the mild, Eeyore "How Like Them" sigh; the lengthy sigh of general acceptance when she retreats to her dogbed  (usually involving a long-drawn-out curse word, "sh!#$%^*&%^!!."); and, finally, a dramatic, throbbing, eloquently tragic sigh that makes me think a little of Sarah Bernhardt. 

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And, increasingly as she gets older, the small dog employs an alarming  continual grunting noise when we show signs of leaving her behind. 

The gruntling -- so loud! so very like a pig! --  accompanied by waves of shivering and lip-smacking, is both pathetic and irritating to the extreme. 

When she suspects something awful is going to happen (luggage is a hint), she takes to trotting close to heel. She'll gaze up with eyes that seem to bulge and glow with panic, like a large frog in a fruitless quest for water.  Her teeth clack together, as if this were the last frozen moments in the saga of The Little Match Girl, each breath death-rattling in her throat. 

Gruntle: this is an actual, old-fashioned verb-form that indicates an ongoing process of the verb "grunt."  

Interestingly enough (for me, anyhow), is that when a former employee is described as "disgruntled,"  the cliche derives from the truth that a happy pig grunts continually, that is, it gruntles. 


When a pig is unhappy, it ceases to grunt, being therefore disgruntled. 

Other like words include trundle, cuddle, gurgle (which become trundling, cuddling, gurgling, gruntling). 

When we return -- after five minutes or five hours, it doesn't matter -- she races around at a ridiculous rate of speed, sometimes forgetting herself so far as to leap up on a leg. 

She will hunt up the biscuit she'd been saving (in case we never returned) and chew it as if gobbling up her own worry. 

Sometimes, for no external reason I can figure, she'll make a querulous, yodeling cry as she dashes underfoot during the homecoming excitement. Pure emotion, but is it whining? Some variant on, "You g.d. jerks! Oh! I was so f$^*ing worried!"  Is it a song of thanksgiving? 

Or is it simply a new way to demand that we fork over the dog-biscuits, "Posthaste, Moth@#$$s!"? 

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