Trooper the Oil Dog

Trooper, our Vizsla, is pretty sure he's more human than dog. While we're all eating and he doesn't get a hamburger, he acts as though it's a personal offense. Sometimes I wonder if isn't just going to cry right there.

He also gets that crying look if we leave the house without him. He stands at the window looking out surely wondering if we're leaving him forever. Yes Trooper, we're never coming back, ever, and now you'll have to find hamburgers all on your own.

Vislas are very much people dogs and extremely protect of their people. If we tickle and roughhouse with Dayna (almost two years old), Trooper is OMGRIGHTTHERE making sure she's okay and we're not hurting her. He'll get right in there and gnaw on your hands if he has to. And he does the same for any of us.

I guess Trooper's a pretty good dog. Even if he tends to be up against your legs all day (he's a leaner), starts whinning and crying when 4:30 comes around and his "mommy" (and mine) aren't home yet, and is sure that he can still fit in your lap though he's long outgrown that.

He does have a very helpful quality when it comes to our business, though. We store various large containers of oil in various places in our house. Some are in boxes with valves, some are in plastic jugs, some in giant plastic cans, and some harder ones in plastic bags and cardboard boxes. Since we don't have the greatest storage arrangement right now for all our stuff, it means lugging these heavy things up and down the stairs, stacking them in the dining room when we don't want to take them back down again, and sometimes tossing the smaller jugs into a laundry basket with a bunch of other supplies.

The thing is, sometimes our oil containers will leak a little. There's different reasons. Maybe the cap is loose. Or once "someone" (mother) didn't fully close a valve so oil slowly dripped out. Another time one of the smaller plastic jugs of castor oil got a crack in it, and filled a thin layer of thick, gooey, sticky oil at the bottom of a laundry basket. And all over various other supplies. Thankfully we had Trooper or all of that would have drizzled onto the floor too!

See, Trooper, he who loves hamburgers and peanut butter, also enjoys a nice lick of oil. Ricebran oil will have him spriting from the other room. He prays I'll drop just a little chunck of coconut oil. And when there's oil slowly dripping on the floor in the basement, or spilling out into a laundry basket upstairs, Trooper will find it! We'll soon be alerted with the sound of a frantic tongue slopping and slurping up every drop he can. Of course his noisy eating habits completely give him away and we stop him before he drinks up, say, all of the castor oil. I'm just guessing that would do a pretty good number on his digestive system.

I suppose that with all the money and hassel he saves us from these oil spills, he deserves a hamburger now and then.