During my week of doing many stupid things, the stupidest by far was taking the boys to get their pictures taken with Santa. Normally I do not take the boys out together for anything, but I wanted to get a photo with both of them and Santa. So I load them into the car and off we went to the Three Dog Bakery. They get very excited about going to places and by the time we parked I had two dogs in standing on my lap digging their nails into my legs and fighting with each other. It took about 10 minutes for us to get out the car without me breaking my arm or losing their leads, and then they were off. Right next door to the bakery is an antique store and Truck can open doors, you know where this is heading. In order to keep Truck out of the antique store I ended up on my ass with his lead wrapped around my body pulling with all my strength, while some man and his border collie laughed uproariously at me. The laughing distracted the boys enough for me to get free and get them into the bakery.

I chose the Three Dog Bakery because they have a separate room where they take the photos and no one is ever in there, except for this past Saturday when the place was full of little pugs and corgis and other small beasts. Pasha went wild wanting to play and Truck just wanted to terrorize. We had an appointment, but they decided to ignore appointments and taking the photos first come, first serve. Which meant Truck and Pasha had to wait in the presence of the other dogs. To make matters worse everyone wants to come up and play with Truck because he such an unusual looking dog. I gave Pasha to one Santa’s helpers and sat on the floor with Truck on my lap in a headlock. All was fine until a corgi came up to him and started barking at Truck, Truck is not a dog to let a challenge go past. He starts barking in his fierce scary dog bark and people start running to pickup their dogs. At this point I just wanted to go home, but they hustled us into the photo area, which was filled with more people who wanted to play with Truck. He went crazy wanting to meet everyone. He knocked over the backdrop, he stepped on the groin of the photographer’s assistant, he crushed the fake presents, he stole a bag of treats, while all this was going on Pasha was trying to kiss everyone. It was decided to take their pictures separately. Pasha went first, but he never stops moving, so his picture has some motion to it. While Pasha was getting his photo taken, I was trying to calm truck down with some relaxation techniques the doggie therapist taught us. This first requires getting Truck on side, not an easy task. In order to get Truck on his side, I have to get on the floor and wrestle with him; the whole time Santa is watching as my jeans slide down my ass. We finally get him to take his photo and they tell me the picture will be ready in 15 minutes. There is no way I can keep these two monsters in the store for 15 minutes, so I just took the boys home and came back for the photos.

When I came back everyone was very nice to me, telling me that a lot of dogs act the way Truck does (most dogs are not Truck’s size). The pictures actually turned out pretty good, but I was so embarrassed. I spent a fortune on dog treats to make up for it. Money always smoothes over bad behavior.