Kara's Reliquary » Chiqui

My Dog is an Art Thief

Kara — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 06:20:49 +0000

Acrylic and charcoal portrait I made of Chiqui

We used to have pet rats, and they are known for stealing things. They would take whatever they could get their tiny little hands on and hide it away behind the books on our bookshelf (after nibbling hundreds of little bites in the edges of the pages). But I have never had a dog that stole anything. Chiqui is different. She loves to lie in her crate and chew on a bone or some other treasure she has found. We have discovered all sorts of interesting things in her crate, and we aren’t always sure where she got them. Once we found pay stubs under her mattress from a job I held some 15 years earlier (she is six years old).

One day I forgot to take out the trash, and left the bag by the front door. I remembered just as I arrived home and braced myself as I opened the door. Sure enough, she had strewn the contents of the bag all over the living room, including coffee grounds, a few green beans and some rice. I thought I got it all cleaned up, but a week or so later, we found an empty tin can she had hidden in her crate (luckily with no sharp edges).

But the pièce de résistance was when we discovered her love of art. A somewhat narcissistic love of art, actually. Stephen was cleaning out her crate one afternoon and starting laughing. He told me I had to come and see it for myself. When I crawled into Chiqui’s crate and saw what she had stolen, I cracked up too. There, leaning up against the wall of her crate, was a portrait of herself. I attended Artfest and in a class I took from Carla Sonheim, I created a charcoal and acrylic portrait of Chiqui. I had left it on the dining room table, and Chiqui must have pulled it off the table and taken it into her crate. Unlike everything else she takes into her crate, she made no attempt to destroy the picture. I guess she just wanted to admire herself.

Attack of the Killer… Cat?

Kara — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:45:55 +0000

I was walking Chiqui last night and checked my email on my phone. I had a wishlist notification from Bookmooch so I stopped for a moment to mooch the book. Just as I clicked the mooch button, a black cat shot out of the darkness and attacked Chiqui. I fumbled with my phone while I tried to pull her away from the cat, totally unprepared for the onslaught. I have never seen such an aggressive cat. I yelled at it to “get out of here” at the top of my lungs and it didn’t faze the cat a bit. Chiqui is a pit bull mix. The cat was, well, a cat. It wasn’t preternaturally large or anything. It was about a quarter of the size of my 60 pound dog. It was clearly defending its territory, because as soon as I wrestled Chiqui a bit further down the sidewalk, the cat stopped its mad pursuit (I was going to say dogged pursuit, but that would just be wrong). The whole thing was made creepier by the fact that it was evening, I wasn’t near a street lamp and it was a black cat. The house the cat was in front of was a long abandoned mess with an overgrown yard. In the gazillions of times we have walked past this house in the last five years, we have never seen the psycho cat.

It’s not the first time Chiqui has been attacked by a much smaller animal. Earlier this year, we were walking her when we saw a chihuahua, who was barking and straining at her leash to get at our dog. As we passed, said chihuahua pulled backward out of its collar and shot straight at Chiqui in attack mode. The little thing must have bitten poor bewildered Chiqui 10 times. Luckily the dog was so small that the bites didn’t break the skin. It was a bizarre sight – the dog was about the size of Chiqui’s head. Obviously, it wasn’t too smart or it wouldn’t have attacked a dog that could eat it in two bites. Throughout the attack, Chiqui just stood there looking surprised, as if she couldn’t believe this cheeky little midget was actually trying to take her on. The worst part is that when the owners finally got around to grabbing the chihuahua, they never apologized. They just stood there checking to make sure their dog was okay, although Chiqui never fought back. I told them they needed to get a harness for their dog, but they weren’t even paying any attention to us. They were just worrying about their precious little monster.

Poor Chiqui – always in the wrong place at the wrong time, it seems.

The Big D.O.G. Bailout

Kara — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:53:50 +0000

Thankfully, Chiqui is gnawing on a bone and not our walls (or shoes, or doorknobs, or laundry baskets, to name a few).

I have to hand it to my husband, Stephen. His gripes about our dog, Chiqui, are always timely. He has often complained that she adds negative value to our household, but lately he has taken to referring to her doggie treats as, “unearned bonuses.” In difficult economic times, we are all concerned about spending money on luxuries. But it seems a little unfair to subject the family dog to the same scrutiny as other line items on the household budget. However, in an attempt to pacify my frugal spouse, I submit the following written justification for Chiqui’s continuing role as cherished pet.

1. Exercise Program: Chiqui has enough energy to power the state of California indefinitely. But since we don’t have her hooked up to the grid, it is imperative that we find another way to release that energy so she doesn’t eat the walls (and she did actually eat a portion of one of our walls once, so we try to avoid that now). Chiqui requires two walks a day minimum, rain or shine. This means that I walk for an hour or more every single day. Walking is good for me. Walking is good for Chiqui. Walking is good for our walls. Score one for Chiqui.

Who could resist this face?

2. Companionship/Stress Reduction: Although Stephen thinks Aibo is all the pet an animal lover could want, I prefer real live animals, especially dogs. Robots are fun for about eight minutes. I checked. One of the reasons we adopted Chiqui was so I would have a buddy when Stephen is traveling. Notice I say “buddy” and not “protection”. Chiqui would let anyone in our house and offer up all our belongings if only they gave her a treat. Well, she would if she wasn’t hiding under the table. Protection, she is not. But after a long day at work, it gives me a huge boost when Chiqui bounds over to greet me. And after we have had our walk and our dinner, she is happy to cuddle up and have her belly rubbed. This is proven stress relief for both human and dog. At least it is in my house.

After a busy day of begging for treats and bumping into inanimate objects, Chiqui finally gets some shuteye.

3. Comic Relief: This is the area in which Chiqui excels. Of the many unbelievably silly things she has done, one of my favorites was the Red Dog Incident. Stephen was in the backyard painting the arbor over our deck. He was painting it red. We were keeping Chiqui in the house to keep her out of the painting area. But I can only let a dog stand by the back door with her legs crossed for so long. I let her out, but went out to supervise her to keep her on the lawn and off the deck. She did her business and before I could usher her back into the house, she took off on what we call her “crazy run”. She zooms around the back yard at high speed in kind of a half hop half run. Once this starts all you can do is get out of the way, because if her skull hits your shin, her head will be fine and you will be on your way to the E.R. to find someone to repair your shattered bone. You can all see what’s coming, so why on earth couldn’t we stop it? She ran/hopped onto the deck, which was covered with slippery plastic tarps. She bounced right into the paint tray, turning it into a sled that flew across the deck while paint splashed everywhere. A significant portion of this paint ended up on Chiqui. She was red. It is to my everlasting sorrow that I did not take a picture of my Red Dog, but the paint was oil-based and we were focused on getting the paint off the dog as quickly as possible. Soon she was mostly black again, although we occasionally found tiny red patches on her fur for about a month after that. Sure, it was a pain to get everything cleaned up, but we were laughing our heads off the whole time. One cannot underestimate the value of a good laugh, and Chiqui provides them in vast numbers.

If you are strictly playing a numbers game, Chiqui offers no discernible financial value to our household, but as we all know, there are things that money can’t buy. Stephen can continue to ask me if I would give Chiqui up if someone offered me a million dollars (Stephen also provides many good laughs), but my answer will always be no.

Please comment below and share how your pet adds value to your household. I could use the ammunition.