save our sod

we have two strays who have adopted us, warts and all, and have deigned to share their house with us while they sleep in the garage. they are one black and one white, named oleman and pretty, respectively.

digression: look, it's already been established that i suck at the giving of names. i can never think of some clever personality-based title for a dog. i prefer to name them tommy or chintu and then call them whatever nauseating epithet i devise later. examples of nauseating epithets: all words ending with -inju, all words starting with oosha-. as in, chinju and ooshachinju.

anyway. so we have these two people sleeping in our garage. they bark and keep the burglars at bay, in addition to joining the dog inside in providing ecstatic musical accompaniment to my arrival home. they follow us to the auto-stand and make sure no other dog or cyclist kidnaps us. they make sure the clothes on the line don't hang too close to the ground by systematically tearing up and sleeping on any article of clothing that might be within leaping distance. they also bark at the midnight watchman and the 5am milkman every. single. morning.

yes, they can be painful little shits sometimes. but then, so can every single person i have ever met. the difference is every single person i ever met isn't being persecuted and shooed at for returning to his bed. and this is exactly the fate that oleman is being visited on by my furious father.

some might say my father has grounds for hostility. this morning oleman tore up both our newspapers in an unprecedented act of humungously pissing my dad off. you don't mess with my dad's newspapers in the morning, this is just not wise. but oleman wasn't to know and as far as he was concerned tearing up newspapers was a pleasant enough occupation while it rained incessantly outside.

so this morning in addition to being sent to buy the 'papers, i also had to promise to Do Something About That Dog. pretty is still allowed because she didn't tear up the 'papers, but oleman is definitely a bad word around our house.

there is no way to keep him out of our house because a. he is oleman! how can i forsake him and b. he can highjump any wall you care to put up. in fact, after his operation (to prevent further puppyfication of the neighbourhood) he escaped pfa's high security dog enclosure by scaling a wall ten feet high. mr dattu, who called to give me the bad news, just couldn't get over this feat and i'm sure he's met his share of wonderdogs over the years.

i am desperately in need of advice. ideally, my father will see the error of his ways and come to love and cherish oleman like i do. but somehow i don't see this happening. oleman, being an old man, will not change his ways because he's heard that proverb about the old dog and new tricks. this means constant shooing will force him (oleman) to sleep next door in the stairway of the brahmin family that hates dogs and does not appreciate their slippers being chewed up.

personally i don't see why people are so fussy about their possessions, but i guess when your guests leave their footwear outside in respect it looks bad to have to return it to them in drool-soaked tatters.

so i have no idea what to do. he is an old dog and carting him off somewhere else, like the blue cross might do, would make him miserable and kill him, i am convinced. on the other hand, if anyone complains to the municipality, they will drag him off and kill him through more direct means.

so what, dear reading public of five, can i do? suggestions are hugely welcome. i know there is a bleeding heart story at every corner in your world today, but this one involves a dog. one of the cleverest i know and the sweetest senile delinquent there ever was.