"Oh, dogs are everywhere that I go..."

Reading Nelson's account of his hatred for his Nintendog reminded me of Mena's new habit of playing Nintendogs every day in the car on the way to work.

Mena bought the Chihuahua version of Nintendogs on December 31, so in addition to Trivial Pursuit, New Years Eve 2006 was marked by the rhythmic, repeated "Augie... Augie... Augie!... Augie", as Mena trained her new Sheltie puppy (named Augie, after her parents' Sheltie). This is the training process: you have to repeat the dog's name over, & over, & over again, until it will respond to commands.

In other words: if you think it's infuriating & repetitive to play the game, try listening to someone play the game. It's much, much worse.

And so the thing is: Mena's now got four dogs. Why so many? Because they're basically puppy prostitutes, working for money, & they can only turn 3 tricks per day, metaphorically (or, actually, quite literally—each dog can compete in only 3 competitions per day).

So Mena's invested her agility competition proceeds in a little army of dogs. Her first was Augie, the Sheltie; she's followed that with Binky, the terrier; Evita, the German Shepherd; and Baby, the King Charles Spaniel. & of course, in a very encouraging Hey-Let's-Get-A-Dog-Ourselves! way, she's quite tired of walking them, feeding them, & cleaning up after them.

Her dogs are, in turn:

• unable to catch a frisbee, because of pathetically short legs (Binky)
• aggressively useless (Evita)
• lethargic & depressed, & just lies around moping [1] (Augie)

Baby is the newest, & Mena's not yet tired of her, apparently.

& the best of all: last night Augie met Alaina's dog Rofl, which meeting unlocked the Shiba Inu puppies at the kennel in Mena's game. Hooray! Another begrudged puppy!

[1] Though apparently he's still quite good in agility competitions.

Comments

[David Jacobs]

I have a love hate relationship with these games. My dog hasn't been rubbed in months, and she's going to be pissed if I ever turn her back on. Same with my Animal Crossing town! I haven't been in ten days and I don't want to have to go back now and pick all the weeds. Somtimes these games are just too stressful!