The One Where It's All About Chubbs

If you ever go to Chubbs' dogster page, you will see that it's titled, "It's All About Me." That's the kind of dog Chubbs is. You can see it in his attitude. "Um, I'm in the room now. Please stop what you are doing and pet me." One of my clients used to tell me that you could just see that he was thinking, "Yes, that's true. I am the most handsome dog in the room."

Well, this blog will make him happy because it is All About Chubbs.

Sunday is my dog day, which means I spend it with my dogs, not other people's. I do have class in the evenings, but it's when I run with Muggsy, take Chubbs to agility class and take Chubbs to therapy work. This Sunday was one of those afternoons spent hauling Chubbs from one activity to another.

In agility class, he was a monster. He's usually the best dog in class, and I'm not just saying that because I'm biased. He's really good. We've been doing a lot of off-leash work lately, though, and today he realized that off-leash means I don't really have control of him. So the course was to send him through a tunnel, over three jumps, through another tunnel and get him in a sit on a table. Now, Chubbs is great at doing what I say, but he's the slowest agility dog ever. So imagine my surprise when he tears out of the tunnel, going faster than I thought he was capable of running, and took off chasing a bee. It was so fast that my agility instructor didn't even get mad. Instead, she said in awe, "Wow, I didn't think he could move that fast." I was, of course, furious that my dog ran away and wouldn't come back. Because when everyone started laughing at him chasing the bee, that just spurred Chubbs on. The obnoxious ham then went on do a victory lap, greeting every dog that was standing around watching with that goofy, proud look on his face while I got more and more angry. I finally got him back on leash and took him through the jumps, but then I had to send him back through the tunnel, which means letting go of the leash. He took off again, knowing it was his chance to work the crowd again. I couldn't keep up, so I dove on the ground and tackled the leash. Very graceful.

At this point, I'm ready to pack it in and call it a day, but I still had to run the course one more time and then take him to therapy work. When I got to the group home, I was a little cheered because it was only one person this week, and all she wanted to do was sit and pet Chubbs and chat with me. He didn't have to perform the stupid biscuit trick or pretend to care about hide and seek. He just laid there while she told me that the girl he met the week before couldn't stop talking about him. She said that when the other dog came to visit, all the girl did was sit and talk about how she liked Chubbs better and she wished he was there instead. So that made me feel good.

And I knew the whole time Chubbs was thinking, "Well, duh. It's All About Me."