10/06/2021

Our dog is snuggled up next to me right now. He’s been staying close ever since Saturday when we tried to cut his hair which I just realized makes this a shaggy dog story.* ** I always thought those were about something else. 

I’m not sure what traumas he went through before he came to us, but they left him terrified of scissors and clippers. Apparently, he had tried to self-soothe because the day after he arrived, he passed a pacifier. 

Before we started grooming, we had given him a (barely) safe dose of a tranquilizer. It did nothing to calm him, but it might have made him looser or more limber since he was able to wriggle out of our grasp even when we had wrapped him in a sheet. Maybe that was Houdini’s secret. Anyway, to show him there was nothing to be afraid of I got down on the floor with him and used my clippers to cut my hair. 

He stared at me and his eyes got wide, I assume. I couldn’t actually see his eyes, because, you know, fur. Eventually, we overcame his fear with peanut butter blandishments and the fact that he only weighs twelve pounds and there were three of us. 

He didn’t internalize, as we had hoped, that, “Resistance is futile,” but I do think he is trying to stay on my good side since if I’m willing to cut my own hair, what would I be willing to do to him?

*I looked it up: A lengthy shaggy dog story derives its humor from the fact that the joke-teller held the attention of the listener for no reason at all, as the end resolution is essentially meaningless

**It turns out I only tell shaggy dog stories, the difference from the classic form is that here at home least, I never get to finish a sentence so no one knows it.