My sister-in-law’s dog

This morning I have to pick up my sister-in-law’s dog from her house and bring it here, so that we can take it to a shelter for a few days. I am dreading it.

Humans are weird. We are assigned this little tasks, which take all of 10 minutes to complete, yet they burden us to no end. The last thing in the world I want to do is take 10 minutes out of my not-especially-busy day to pick up a dog I don’t like and shove her, her cage and her food into our mini-van. But I also don’t want to pick up the dry cleaning, wipe off the kitchen stomp mat, clean my plate, floss, walk the dog or, really, report my book. Not today. Because I’m feeling lazy.

But I really don’t want to pick up the dog.

I don’t quite know why Leah bought this dog. She used to have one named Marlo, and the thing died. Was never a well-behaved dog. My wife once glided across a living room floor on its liquidy shit (she was wearing socks). So what does she do? She gets an even worse dog, named it Mattie. Beast jumps on everyone, licks everything, barks incessantly. Mattie spent three weeks at a training school … cost a ton of money. Then returned from training school thoroughly untrained.

And now I have to pick her up.

It’s cold.