Sorry for the long hiatus; this is about my dog

Our last dog, a small cream-colored Chihuahua-terrier mix, got cancer and died in 2017. We didn’t get another for a while but then it was the pandemic and everyone was getting a dog so we did too. The one guiding principle, established by my wife, is that our new dog not in any way resemble our prior dead dog. So we headed down to Family Dog rescue and walked out of there with a small tan Chihuahua-terrier mix. Good job everyone.

We named her Cici. She grew up on the streets of Tijuana - no joke, that’s really where they found her - and was, surprisingly to her I imagine, shipped north to San Francisco and then to the shelter. On our way out the door with her a very nice Family Dog employee said, “Hope her house training goes well!” Wait, excuse me? Our last dog came preloaded with that app. Not this one.

It took about 4-5 months before it finally sunk in for her. She had never lived in a house before and I spent a day teaching her how to go down the stairs. She wouldn’t go on walks voluntarily so we had to carry her like a block away, wait for her to pee/poop, and then she would walk back.

Cici bonded immediately with my wife and child, who she thinks are the greatest things she’s ever experienced, a daily exploding sun of joy and pure radiant love. I, on the other hand, am tolerable but not excitement-producing.

Owing probably to her traumatic childhood, Cici is fucking insane. She’s pretty good around other dogs but is clearly slightly afraid of them at all times. For the first two years we had her, she barked at anyone who came over pretty much endlessly until I shoved so many treats at her she got diverted. She has reached the stage where now she growls menacingly if she hears an Amazon van, which she can recognize by sound alone. If we put plates on the table but no one has been cooking, she starts to whine because she knows what that means: DELIVERY DANGER. On walks, she has to stop and mark spots with increasingly small amounts of pee like 5 times, which I understand is unusual for a female dog.

But she is SO SWEET, at least to us. She loves to cuddle (with the girls, anyway) and take naps and generally act cute. It’s a winning employment strategy that balances out the times when she acts like a fucking menace. (I know, we should spend more time training and all these things are fixable, I’m just lazy.)

She chases a laser pointer like it’s a fucking squirrel. (Necklace by my daughter on rainbow loom; let me know if you or your dog want one.)

Like someone said, we don’t deserve dogs.

So I’m going to try and post more regularly again! We’ve got an election coming up and Garry Tan has blocked me along with everyone else on Twitter so I have to figure out what he’s up to by using my secret burner Twitter account, but I’m informed he’s trying to buy the election and turn SF into a far-right dystopia, and we don’t want that, or maybe the Board of Supervisors are all lunatic Trotskyites who are going to take all the billionaires’ money and use it for woke reeducation camps and drag shows. Or something. And we’re going to convert office buildings into housing! May granchildren will be the first to tour when they’re done. Anyway, welcome back.