Meet Mack and Ivy. You’ll hear about them occasionally. Probably Mack more than Ivy because Ivy doesn’t really enjoy human company.
We have two dogs for exactly two reasons.
1. Dogs get lonely and do better with a companion.
2. I tend to overgeneralize and underestimate the amount of effort any task will take which is how Coach and I have found ourselves in half-marathons, sea kayaks in the jungle, and building decks, among other things.
As a matter of fact, it was shortly after the half-marathon incident that Coach amended the marriage by saying that no one was required to be involved in my “cockamamy schemes” without consent. In other words, I’m no longer allowed to say, “Oh, Coach and I will do it. We love to rivet sheet metal.” I have to ask first.
Back to the dogs and why we have two. Since the humans don’t like to participate in all of my adventures, Coach gifted me Mack, my very own loyal sidekick.
This is Ivy.
Ivy would rather be off hunting somewhere and has earned her name, Ivy the Huntress, a hundred times over. She is an expert mole catcher with over 200 career kills. She’s also pretty skilled at rabbit hunting. She caught the same opossum two nights in a row, and she caught a young owl out of the air. She is high strung, nervous, and prefers to lurk in the general vicinity of people. Other than the evil squirrel that taunts her from the maple tree on the front lawn, she has no rivals.
And this is Mack, or Pookie-Lou as I like to call him. See? No self-respecting man would let you call him Pookie-Lou, but Mack does. It’s serendipitous.
Mack, on the other hand… He is a people dog. He offers 100% unconditional love and is always overjoyed to see you, no matter how big a curmudgeon you may be. He is warm, snuggly, smells of Fritos and summer, and he has the breath of a cyclops. His arch nemesis is the hot air balloon. He is a lover of cockamamy schemes, and he is my only running buddy. He enjoys a good sausage and egg breakfast, a stout ball chasing session, and he firmly believes that he is human and thus enjoys all the authority God gives humans.