Usually I strive to show polite self-restraint with bizarre people, but now I think I need to work on learning how to bop up-da-side-a-da-head those who really deserve it. Like the crazy lady in the grocery store this afternoon who dumbfounded me about her intention to breed puppies.
The first few seconds of our encounter were banal. She noted the two massive bags of dog food tenuously draped over my grocery cart and, through the power of deductive reasoning, pronounced that I must have a big dog.
I'm quite accustomed to these dull observations and usually enjoy a brief conversation about dogs --especially my dogs-- but she apparently mistook my “Yes, I d--” as a gracious invitation for her to lapse into endless prattle about her three lapsa-itsu-yorkie-peeka-poos or somesuch, which caught me completely by surprise.
Her mouth was out of the gate in a flash: “Oh, they’re so cute, so, so cute. Three little ones. You wouldn’t believe how cute. Pure bred mixes. I got three of them. So I could breed them.”
Three pure bred mixes, indeed! That would make breeding them a menage-a-mutt-tois?
I was speechless, but it didn't matter because she was on a roll. “But then again, I don’t know. Maybe I won’t breed them because it’ll be a smelly mess just like the breeder’s place. I bought them for a really good deal, really good. Except that they eat their poop, oh dear, I never heard of such a thing, probably because that’s how they lived, do ya think?"
The time she granted me for my response was just long enough for my jaw to drop. Without coming up for air, she barreled on: "Well, that's what I think. But, oh, the SMELL at the breeder’s! Like I said, she sold them to me for a really good price, but the one girl... oh, so cute, just cute as a button... she won’t go outside. Uh, she goes outside, but doesn't GO, ya know? She just comes right back in the house and goes, GOES! anywhere: the living room carpet, our BED even, the bathroom floor… Now, our bathroom --we have a MASTER bathroom-- that’s not so bad because it’s tiled, ya know, but anywhere she has to pee she just squats right down…”
And at this point, apparently because I seem like the type of person who doesn’t know what “squat” means, she contorted her --had to be-- 200 plus pounds on a 4 foot frame into a half squat right there in the grocery aisle between the boxed cereals and baked goods.
But she wasn’t finished. “I don’t know what to do. She just goes, GOES! anywhere she wants --without even thinking. Now, the boy, he’s good. He goes outside. Cute little thing. But, no, definitely no, I'm not going to breed them and, anyway, it probably won’t work because, according to my husband, the little boy dog doesn’t, ya know, uh, he doesn’t know how to DO it, if ya get my drift.”
I feared I was about to learn how it came to be that the husband was privy to this sensitive information about the performance issues of the boy dog’s sexual apparatus and had I not been pushing a cart with a ton of dog food teetering on it, I’d have exited in haste to the checkout, but I was cornered.
I had to do something, so I lobbed this to her: “You really need to get them spayed/neutered.”
“Oh, I would never do that!”
“Well, yes, you really DO need to get them spayed/neutered. Really.” In the thimbleful of time I figured I had, I tried a shotgun-sermon approach of rattling through the ethical, health, genetic, convenience, logistical, rescue… reasons --all compelling, passionate reasons-- to do the right thing.
“Oh, no. They are so cute. And nice little dogs. I would never do thah-at.”
“Really, please. Do it for the good of your dogs… They came from a PUPPY MILL! Don't you want those cute little dogs to have a good life with you? For them, for you, don't risk having more litters...”
I am confident that Cute Little Boy Dog eventually will figure things out. Maybe he’ll find the husband's girly magazines on the bedroom floor before Cute As A Button Sister soaks them with urine-- and, poof, there will be incestuous canine love in the air.
I did not bop her with a box of Twinkies, but I should have. I'm bemoaning my likely failure to prevent who-knows-how-many litters of puppies from ending up --at best-- adopted out of a shelter. And, I'm really sorry I didn't think to ask her for the breeder's name and location of Doggy Dung Ranch because that's where some serious bopping needs to be done.
