This was a blog I posted elsewhere a few months back over the summer. Thought I'd share these here now.

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As we approach my one year anniversary of taking on some honest-to-God responsibility in my life (i.e. keeping a creature that's something other than a plant alive for longer than six months), I thought it would be fun to reflect on some of my experiences with Boomer, my corgi, in the first year of his existence on this planet.

I read several dog books before I got Boomer, thinking that it may help prepare me for challenges and questions that may arise. But it turns out all that book reading was a waste of time (with the exception of one book, by the monks of New Skete monastery; I found their advice very practical and wouldn't have made it through my first night with Boomer; He was howling like a coyote in my bedroom and wouldn't lie down. I read the New Skete book, followed their advice, and out like a light he went). In fact, I'm positive the books specifically about Corgis read like travel books where the author just makes stuff up about the place they "traveled" to. For example, one particularly worthless book I read (by some snooty lady) said that Corgis need to be bathed 1-2 times A YEAR. To date, my dog has taken enough baths for 30-40 years and he's a year old. Why? Because he's about six inches off the ground at his highest, he can't HELP but get into stuff. Look at your own feet – they are closest to the ground and get dirty just by being in contact with it. A Corgi…is like a giant foot. With teeth and ears.

I'm not assisted by the fact that Boomer LOVES to roll in mysterious, neat-smelling substances, some of which I can safely identify as excrement and others I can't safely identify as anything (and I probably wouldn't want to know anyway). He's rolled in stuff that's made me gag. Or that the fact he attracts water like a shammy cloth. Even if I kept Boomer indoors all day every day, he would STILL get dirty (he's like a little boy – if he's awake, he's going to end up dirty. Why? Because he's a little boy). So I'm "atypically" bathing my dog, apparently.

Also, Corgis bark. Some of them bark a lot. Some have no inside voice. And that describes Boomer. He barks LOUD. Granted, this is mostly confined to the dog park. Typically he will get in the face of another dog or dogs and just bark-bark-bark-bark-bark, with a volume that greatly exceeds the necessary volume (when you are three inches from another dog, you don't need to bark at it like it's sitting across the Grand Canyon from you). Boomer doesn't understand this. I know he's not deaf because he can follow some rudimentary commands, when I say "Go to your box", he does his darnedest to not go to his box because he knows what "your box" means. I should get one of the anti-barking collars, but I haven't brought myself to do it. He rarely barks at home (as opposed to my neighbor dog who barks…whenever he's awake).

In addition to all that, Boomer sheds LIKE A FIEND. I vacuum my apartment weekly and when I'm done, you would think I had sucked up a ferret at some point in the cleaning. If there was a Locks for Love for dogs, we'd donate by the bushel BIWEEKLY. The worthless Corgi book told me that Corgis shed two times a year (I don't know if this coincides with the two baths or not).. I've determined those two times are "Right now" and "Shortly". Thank goodness Boomer doesn't mind being brushed. And thank goodness I'm not incapacitated by dog dander.

All that being said, screw the snooty corgi dog book lady. She never raised a Boomer.

More to come…