I Love Lupe (31)

UNITED STATES—I, Lupe the Supreme, have a love-hate relationship with my “master,” so frustrated over my deficiency of obedience. Of course, I could easily wash my white-tipped paws of culpability and exonerate myself of all blame in toto, seeing as how I am the very pinnacle of what centuries of British dog breeders bred me to be: an alpha female lethal weapon.

True, I have inflicted untold psychological torture on my master. When he is summoning to the echo-chambers of his brain the blessings I, Lupe, have bestowed on him, he can wallow in a bit of gratitude: after all he’s free of the yoke of having to walk me. Sometimes I do take cruel delight in leaping vertically when the Door Dash or UPS pass by.

On Tuesday I shot straight up when the mailman tossed something in the box. Then, once the height of the fence was reached, and I got a peek of the freedom that beckoned beyond, with the full force of gravity one of my hind paws came down on my master’s foot, through layers of sock and shoe leather, to produce intense pain.

He muttered an oath to uphold incontinence. Meanwhile, I revel in plans to continue producing it, so long as my impressionable “master” is duped by ignoramuses into thinking that milk and bread are proper grub for a pit-bull lab now reaching the twilight of puppyhood. These folks, as the old guard that espouses the belief that a dog is a kind of garbage disposal, and in weakness my “master” caves into to those sentiments. It naturally has produced more than a few instances of Lupe’s revenge as he traipses in late at night from his forays and, victim of his own sloth, neglects to illuminate their flagstones, often the target of my canine body’s gifts.

When he bounds indoors, ready to chill out, only to have nostrils bullied by a rich ordure. Then he must brave their humiliation of taking a bougainvillea twig, which likely as not, may produce the insult of a thorn piercing his flesh, to dig of from the ridges of his athletic shoes all residue of my healthy release. But hey? What can you expect when he shrugs off the duty of walking so willful a dog as myself.

At the end of the day, it has been my crowning achievement to plant the seed of terror that sooner or later he still may face the consequences of deluding himself that, while Baby DeVille and I seem to be playful frenemies. There lurks the raw truth that he may one day be a toothsome treat for a hound with a soulful gaze and a savage jaw. You better keep on your toes, Master Mister. And its high time you clip those toenails.

To be continued…