What I Wore

I always give Ziggy a hard time for not protecting me. She’s really a terrible guard dog. When party guests start to get too rowdy in the living room, she goes straight to my bathroom and hides under the toilet until someone breaks the seal and awkwardly asks me how to remove the sausage from the water closet. When something goes boom in the night, her jerking awake scares me more than the initial noise. When someone knocks on the front door, she doesn’t bark or alert me to the intruder in any way other than perking her ears up and taking shelter behind me. 

Not only does she know how very mortal she is, strangers are not in the least bit weary of her either. My roommate takes her pitbull/mastiff mix out to pee in the middle of the day and people go out of their way to not walk past her. When I take Ziggy out when I’m cold and vulnerable at night, people walk right up to me despite my pajamas and bitch face, both designed to deter that very thing from happening. Doesn’t help. I’ve seen yorkies more intimidating than this 50-pound ball of fluff, but the day I took these pictures something happened. She did something unexpected, something, dare I say it, protective.

I drove to this park, found the least populated area I could find to snap some photos (you might be able to see the I-feel-awkward-cuz-a-stranger’s-walking-by feels in my posture in some of these shots), then I took Zigz into the dog park. There was this really fat spaniel-looking pup that didn’t want to play, it just wanted to go up to people, sit on their feet and feel the warm touch of human hands. Clearly I have a soft spot for big ears and pudgy bellies, so I immediately started loving on this pup. Ziggy abandoned whatever ball she was pretending to care about as she always loses interest in fetch after reaching the ball, and came over to check on me/make sure she was safe. 

She saw the spaniel and was okay with it at first, but then the spaniel jumped up on me and that was it. Ziggy snarled, growled, put up her mohawk and was ready to throw some ‘bows on this dog. It was kind of embarrassing because no one wants to be the mean dog’s owner at the dog park, but secretly I felt a sense of pride swell up inside of me. If you’re a human, you can break into my house, walk right up to me unwarranted and party it up in my kitchen, but listen up dogs: don’t even think about jumping up on me for some snuggles. There is a line and that, my friends, is crossing it.

So maybe she’s more jealous than she is protective, but hey, at least I know she cares.

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