Me & Matrix, Matrix & I

It's beginning to feel a lot like solidarity! Finally, I can say with 5% certainty, that the girls are completely moved out of my house. I can say with 95% certainty that they have a long way to go, a lot to do, and more and more time will have to pass before I can truly claim to be living alone. Matrix doesn't mind, he has two homes to go to now. He has two beds to crawl into; mine and Caity's. He has two bowls with food always prepared for him - he's in Dog Heaven, and probably believes I should have kicked them all out of the house a while back.

I don't seem to blog much about my OTHER dog. Matrix is my perfect hound. I tell him he's perfect, I even brag about him to everyone I meet because Matrix, unlike Faith, doesn't have the fan club, the paparazzi, mail coming to him daily, and he doesn't fly First Class. He doesn't fly actually - he's my home-dog, so I tell him over and over again how perfect he is. If he were out in the public,(I wink at him when I say this) he would be snatched up in a second! He would be carried off to some foreign country where he would be pampered and loved day in and day out, but I would never see him again - so he must stay at home and wait for us to return from all of the VERY BORING and tedious things that Faith and I must do. (I also lie to my dog and say that my work is mundane, ordinary, and that he would grow very tired of it were he to ever go with us...despite whatever Faith tells him of her adventures when we return with more luggage than we took out.)

Matrix is perfectly suited for being the house dog. He is perfectly 26 pounds, stands perfectly 16" off the floor, he has a perfect glossy black coat with tri-color trim, and a little perfect premature graying going on just around his perfectly pointed muzzle. For being a mixed breed dog he is perfectly balanced with the world's favorite breed; the Dachshund, and the world's most versatile breed, the Beagle. His mother and his father were both papered, they had certifications of great pedigrees - however, they were not suppose to date. When they did, and when the 8 puppies they created were born, all of them were thrown out like trash - given to the Humane Society because of their "uselessness". They weren't purebred anything! They were (dare we whisper it?) mutts.

My perfect little mutt is much more than non-useless. He is quite useful indeed. When I need my legs warmed he is there to do it. When I need a buddy in a storm, he's there before I am, crawling up my back and into my sweater usually, because he realizes how scared I can be during a tornado. Brave dog that he is, he even sleeps on the back of my couch - which is less than 4 inches thick (without falling - Dachshunds are really balanced animals). Because he comes from good Beagle stock, he can sing! He sings very well in fact, and he has no problem leaving the food that he doesn't want in the bowl for a later snack - unlike other dogs. Again, he is perfect.

Matrix has one pose: up with the chin, to the side a bit, and always stern-faced. Must be the breeding - he's usually got a wink in his eye, a grin on his face, and a stiff wag of the tail most other times. The tail story is a good one. I had to be admitted to the ER once after he poked me in the eye with his rock-hard tail! The same tail that won him "Best Tail Wagger" in 2003 and 2004 in our fair city! Though he may not be a parade dog like Faith, we do take him to the Strut Your Mutt competitions where he always takes something home! One year it was Mr. Congeniality for going by to say hello to every person and then going by to say "hello" to ever tree!

Neutered very early on, there will be NO MORE little Matrix mutts; a sad tale yes, but a good gesture in terms of being responsible. I'm sure had I asked him if he were willing to make this sacrifice on his own my little weenie-dog would have agreed to have the surgery - he's very conscientious....quite polite! Perfect! I've been teasing him for years now (8) that we'd be alone some day - no kids, no noise, just our music, just our friends, our television shows, whatever we wanted to do. He realizes that Faith is part of that WE now, and at first he was a bit unforgiving, but when he looked up from his couch perch and saw that he was never alone - always able to travel from one apartment to the next, and even making a pit stop between the two units to see his little doggie friend, he decided that being the house dog wasn't that bad of a gig after all. He'll let Faith stay a little longer, but SHE must sleep under the bed!