My dogs make me laugh and are some of my favorite things in the world, but they’re also one of my biggest sources of stress. They’re just not easygoing as far as dogs go. Their emotions range from depressed to psychotic to exceptionally psychotic. I’m very jealous of people who can just toss their dogs in the car and go to the stupid park. They get where ever they’re going and just open the door and let little Furr-do fly. It’s an epic battle just to get my dogs in a car. And once they’re in the car, I basically just have to sit there for a minute and then go back inside because there is no public place I can take these ogres.

But anway, they’re the lot life handed me so here they are.

This is Cowboy. I’ve had him since I was about 19. I told my mom I needed a dog to cope with the crippling homesickness that often comes with being in college, and I told her I’d like that dog to be an adorable yorkie. So my sister found him at a feed store, I guess the sort of place where they sell neon pink baby chickens at Easter and other genetically modified animals. So, he’s sort of a yorkie… a large, awkward yorkie. But let me tell you I was never more happy to get that little puppy and I just hope that you’re lucky enough to have the sort of family that when you tell them it’s hard being 300 miles away and you’re sad and becoming an adult kind of sucks a little and so you need a constant companion… that they’ll drop everything and get you a little ogre of your own. Fast forward eight years later and here we are. Cowboy is… different. He hates everything, he thinks toys are gay, and he wants you to pet him maybe twice a year. He’s your standard cat in a dogs body.

Here’s Penny. She is technically PJ’s dog. He got her a few months after we started dating. If this dog knows you well, she loves you very much. Loves you to the point of frequently climbing into your lap and staring you directly in the face until you’re so uncomfortable that you call for help. But if she doesn’t know you that well, she’ll trick you into petting her and then show you her teeth so that you, too, need to call for help. Another awesome habit she has is being in a dead sleep and then when an unfamiliar guest stands up from the couch, she leaps into action, sprints across the living room, and snaps her teeth in the air about an inch and a half from their femoral artery. So yeah, owning a pitbull stresses me out quite a bit. But, I also know that all of her personality quirks come from not being properly socialized as a puppy, so I blame myself and PJ. But mostly PJ.

And now we have Kitty Biscuit. And my god is this dog insane. She showed up in the neighborhood on the Fourth of July a couple of years ago. She followed the neighbor’s kids home. I said I would take her and find her owners. Surely she would like to play with my own plus sized yorkie for the night. So the next day we begin the search. Homegirl was not microchipped. So we drove around looking for lost maniac signs, and searched every craigslist posting and lost pet website out there. But like a very small, adorable phantom, she seemed to have appeared from nowhere. So, we kept her. And indeed, if there is a better way to describe this dog than psychotic, bloodthirsty asshole, I don’t know what it is. It’s no wonder no one was looking for her. She is as Jekyll and Hyde as Penny though, and as soon as you’re ready to boot her to the moon, she curls up on your stomach and bats her big brown eyelashes at you and tells you she’ll love you forever. Stupid dog.

Anyway, I guess dogs are about 0.3 percent the work of children, but I imagine them to be equal parts stressful and rewarding. And yeah, I’ll probably keep telling stories about my dogs in response to stories about your kids like they’re the same damn thing.

Look at these assholes. That furry white mess is Milo. He’s not mine. I’ll tell you about that nutjob some other time.