Dogs Squander Their Superpowers

So yesterday I was walking Roscoe down the street and talking on the phone.

(btw-- recently, I got one of those bluetooth earpieces. Uch. I know I look like a total star trek douchebag and everyone hates talking to me now because they keep complaining they can't hear me-- but it's too friggin handy for when I need to pick up poop or if I'm carrying stuff. Plus, I got extra paranoid that the phone was gonna mess up my brain eventually cause the internet told me so.)

Anyway, we're walking along and Roscoe starts pulling toward the gutter sniffing at something. I'm thinking he's maybe gonna drop a deuce but he starts pulling harder and I realize it's not deuce time. He smells food. He pulls me down the block leading up to (treasure!) an old gross chicken wing in the gutter. He wants to eat it like an idiot but I yanked him away from it. He was like, 'Nooo! My treasure!!!' The thing that I found amazing was that he could smell it from so SO friggin far away. It was just a little chewed up chicken wing and he smelled it from down the street like it was big as a garbage truck in the summer. Plus he could smell the chicken wing smell in the city-- sifting through the dozens of smells all around. It is sort of amazing.

And his hearing is pretty friggin impressive. I tested it the other day. Lately, I've been buying american cheese for him. I've been trying to train him to 'Stay'. (We skipped that lesson back in the day because I was lazy about training. He got sit and paw and I figure that was enough. I knew from the beginning he would only come when called when he felt like it so that was that there too.) Anyway, the other day he was lying on the floor zoning out a couple rooms away and I went into the kitchen and tested something out. Usually when I go into the kitchen he doesn't bother getting off his ass unless I let him know something is in it for him-- but this time I took out the american cheese without telling him. And I undid the plasticwrap super quietly to see if he could pick up on it. And as soon as it crinkled for a second I heard him get up and come trotting over. He heard the crinkle!

And as I'm trying to train his dopey dog brain to 'Stay'-- I was looking at him like, 'Dog! You have friggin super powers! You have super hearing! And super smell! And you're squandering it! Look at you! Do you use your powers for good?? To help the world? To fight crime? Something?! No! What do you do? You use em to track down gross old chicken wings in the gutter and capitalize on american cheese crinkles... Way to go.

Then again what could he really do with his super powers if he wanted to? Like if he heard a crime or smelled some smoke? Spring into action and be a hero? He can't even figure out the doorknob.

Maybe he has a point.

And maybe in this particular post-- maybe I don't.

ok bye!

tOdd