Things My Dog Loves (That Most Humans Don't)

I could've written some ironic, cynical commentary on the holiday known as Valentine's Day, but instead, something possessed me to write about my dog, Raisintoast (Raisin for short). Maybe it's because dogs have a lot to teach us about love. They lay their heads in your lap no matter who you voted for in the last election, or whether you like cheese in your grits or not. They see past the dividers and recognize the love-needing human in all of us.

As much as I admire a dog's capacity to love, there are some things they love that I just can't imagine loving myself. This especially applies to Raisin. I'll never understand why Raisin loves the following:

1. Eating socks, gloves, and charcoal out of the fireplace. He likes his food smoked, apparently.
2. Chewing on a beef bone that he found on the roadside, dropped, and found again in the snow several months later.
3. Trying to bury said bone in the carpet by scratching and scratching and scratching and scratching, no matter how many times I remind him that this is physically impossible.
4. Swallowing ice cubes whole.
5. Eating roadkill whole (I don't let him do this, he just always manages to get it when I'm not looking).
6. Humping blankets, sofa cushions, dog beds, chair legs, my brother's leg, and the air. Despite having been neutered.
7. Knocking newspapers out of people's hands (actually, this sounds kinda fun).
8. Barking at no one except my friend Gray.
9. Biting a branch off a Christmas tree.
10. Stealing potholders.
11. Dropping neat little piles of dog food on my pillow, and sometimes on my face.
12. Shamelessly displaying his "nether regions" for all to admire. If he were a person, he'd probably be arrested for doing so.
13. Licking himself. All of himself.
14. Stuffing his face with big mouthfuls of snow.
15. Sleeping in positions that would probably break a person's neck.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to run down a busy street and slap the newspapers out of people's hands.

Raisin with "Ashley" the hippo.