From The Knifebox

JD note: This post originally appeared on The Knifebox more than five years ago. Since then, our dog Crash — The Greatest Dog Who Ever Lived — has slowed down quite a bit. He’s gone deaf (or he’s faking it pretty well). He’s prone to accidents. He’s lost a lot of weight. Crash is 13 years old now, or somewhere around there, and we’re starting to think that the little guy is … well, we don’t want to think about it. He’s been a part of our family, a big part, since Luke was a preschooler. I’ll have more to say about him in posts ahead. But here’s an old post with a new picture of TGDWEL.

Nov. 29, 2009

I’m not sure where we got it, or when, whether it came from Mary Jo’s side or mine, but somewhere along the line, we came into possession of a cheap, twin-sized, now-threadbare pink blanket.

Everybody knows the kind. I’ll bet these things don’t go for more than $9.99 apiece. Really thin, made of some kind of synthetic wool-type material, with the shiny faux-satin strip at the top. I can’t believe they’d ever keep anybody really warm. Heck, I can’t think that anyone would really want to sleep under one of them. They’re more likely used as an emergency, third-layer-on-a-freezing-night thing. All they do is take up space in the bottom of the hallway closet.

We don’t use ours. But Crash, our Jack Russell, does. (He’s color blind. What does he care that it’s pink?) The blanket is right on top of his little doggie bed, underneath one of the windows in our bedroom. On colder nights, Crash will dig his way under the blanket and settle down to the point where we have to go over and pat around just to make sure he’s in there.

Crash is pretty smart, so we weren’t really surprised when we saw that, one summer day, he had actually pulled the blanket off his bed, dragged it across the floor to a sunny spot and was lying there, just catching some rays. In fact, we were pretty proud of the little bugger.

Until, of course, we saw him a couple days later, pulling his stupid pink blanket around the bedroom again, but not because he wanted the dumb thing. Part of the satin thingy was all hooked up in his collar. The damn thing was following him around.

Stupid cheapy pink blanket. Dumb dog. Dumb us, for thinking Crash actually moved that thing into the sun just to take a nice nap in the afternoon sun.

I’d throw that ratty ol’ pink blankie in the trash tomorrow if the dog wasn’t so attached to it.