How many licks…

…does it take to get to the center of a Sarah-pop? I imagine I will learn the answer to this question, at least to the nearest hundred or so, over the next few days as my stupid dog tries to extract herself from her cherry candy shell.

I buy her rawhide bones. I buy her Kongs and squeaky balls and even a puzzle. She has a squeaky monkey, a squeaky George Bush (different doll), and a non-squeaky teddy bear. But none of these things interest her nearly as much as anything that resides on the coffee table.

This is not a neglected dog: she comes to work with me almost every day, she sleeps on the bed with me, and we take occasional walks in the park to chase the squirrels. Most of the times she has turned destructive, she has been left alone for less than 3 hours, far shorter than the one day a week she’s usually home alone for my whole 8 hour work shift. Today, I went to Office Depot for all of 2 hours, giving her more than enough time to get bored with the DryErase marker she rendered unusable and turn her attention to the cherry Blow-Pop that had apparently fallen out of my pocket onto the couch last night. (I’ve been keeping suckers handy when I plan on facing situations that heretofore have required nicotine, and there’s nothing like a YDAtl exec meeting to make you dream of cancer.)

When she got down to the center of the pop, she decided that chewing gum was just not her thing, and kindly left most of that on the flokati rug in my bedroom. But both of her forearms all the way up to her elbows are spattered with sticky, crunchy, red candy goodness. This makes it all the more charming when she performs her normal beg-for-forgiveness routine of timidly offering her paw to shake; then I’m stuck to the animal I’m chastising, and come away with more dog hair on me than usual.

So if you see a black English shepherd strolling through midtown going smack-crunch, smack-crunch, smack-crunch down the sidewalk and sporting a really f’d up haircut, say hello, ’cause that’s my girl.