The Battle of the Pets
Friday, March 4th, 2005
I was having a little chat with my brother tonight…......shall we say UltraDan? He and his lovely wife, Mary live way across the country in the Garden State. I am referring, of course, to New Jersey. They have a darling little cockatiel who goes by the name of Sebastian. Naturally, in the course of our conversation, I just happened to mention my precocious new poodle child, Murphy, and a….um…shall we say “friendly competion” developed. Which is better, a bird or a dog?
I’d like to throw down the gauntlet here, on this very public, very widely-read(?) website. No doubt you can tell from recent photos that Murphy is an extemely handsome, intelligent and personable young fellow.
Recently I purchased a bell for him; you know, the kind you might find at a hotel desk to ring for service? The idea was to train him to ding the bell if he had the need to go outdoors to visit the, uh, “powder room”. UltraHeather had a friend whose little Yorkshire Terrior was so trained. The first night, I put Murphy’s little paw on the bell, rang it and let him out. One more time, and he was off and running. “Ding, I need to go potty.” “Ding, I want to chase the cats” “Ding, I want to eat the cat’s food.” “Ding, I want to go out because you always give me a treat when I come back in.” The last one finally occured to me after he had been in and out about 12 times a few nights ago.
Does Sebastian do that?
I had some clean, warm blankets in the laundrey basket, and guess who jumped right in and made himself at home? Does Sebastian do that?
Bring it on, BirdMan!
UltraMom
I vote dog, but I’ve never had a bird. I just can’t imagine that you could wrestle with them as much.
Turtle is where it’s at.
BEaker can live underwater, he has a shell, and he has flippers. You can’t say that about your animals can you?
Oh yes, and he rings a bell when he wants to go outside, but first puts on his tophat. Did I mention he can talk too?
Gotta go dog here.......definately dog.
Well, as I’m not used to perusing this website more than once a decade, I missed the posts deriding my little pet until I received a link from my sister touting the fact that Sebastian was being maligned in two countries. Now Sebastian would type this himself (Can Murphy do that?), but he’s a little tired and cranky this morning, so he asked (Can Murphy do that?) me to do it for him. Yes, at times he can get a little cross when we interrupt him reading the morning paper, and he gets annoying when he changes the channels to watch his favorite pet show (none of which include dogs ,by the way). But as an example of the other types of things he can do:
He can preen his feathers.. CMDT (Can Murphy Do that)?
He can chirp CMDT?
He can talk, dance, and sing? In fact, he can do most anything ... CMDT?????????
I think not. I look forward to a friendly verbal rematch on their abilities. I’ve got to go now. Sebastian wants to watch “Marketwatch” to check on his stocks....