"That is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen"

Lyle and I were simply walking along our favorite beach, Hendry's Beach, minding our own business one sunny summer day. Hendry's is commonly referred to as "The Dog Beach." Everyone takes their dogs there. That doesn't mean we don't respect the sunbathers, but it is one of the few Santa Barbara beaches you're allowed to have dogs on. There are signs up about leash laws, but those we don't respect for the most part. I'll admit that along with Lyle's lingering love of humping that the neutering didn't quite quell, he also finds it necessary to lift his leg and mark damn near anything he can reach (not that a Chihuahua can reach all that much anyway). For this reason I usually carry Lyle along the beach until we've passed by most the sunbathers. I believe there is an understanding that the sun worshippers stay near the entrance of the beach where we keep our dogs leashed and avoid the farther reaches where the dogs run free and urinate as they will.

Lyle and I got past the bulk of the sunbathers and I set him down to stray where he would as we made our way down the beach. Before I could so much as say, "Lyle heel!" (not that he would listen) he ran up to an empty beach chair next to two sunbathing women and lifted his leg on it. I don't know where he acquired this love for pissing on beach chairs, but they are one of his main targets if given his way. And no, I don't let him pee on every beach chair on the beach...he just gets that look in his eye that he'd love to pee on it whenever we see a beach chair. And since we had just barely arrived at the beach he had a somewhat filled bladder and really let loose on the chair. Normally he's not very good at rationing his urine and just lifts his leg for the sake of aerobic exercise after the first couple tinklings.

One of the women went berserk and started shouting, "Oh my gosh! Would you look at that! That is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen! That is so gross! I can't believe how gross that is!" And on and on and on. I offered to rinse her chair off as I retrieved my smug pup, but she declinced as muttering yet again, "That is the grossest thing I have ever seen!"

I'll admit it isn't the most pleasant thing to have a dog piss on your beach chair, but I think it's quite a stretch to call Lyle urinating "the grossest thing" one has ever seen. Maybe not all agree with me in calling Lyle the most adorable creature on the face of the earth, but he is one damn cute little dog. Furthermore, when I think of disgusting things, there are a lot of things I would place before urination. There are a lot of disgusting things you take the risk of seeing when you go to the beach. One thing that comes to mind when I think about the beach, or any aquatic setting for that matter, is a person whose appearance is particularly unsavory in inappropriate beach attire. I'm sure many have made the connection already, but what I'm getting at is pregnant women in bikinis. I don't think there's much that's more disgusting than that. Pregnant women on the beach in swim suits are just fine; bikinis at the beach are just fine. But the two together? I say NO.

OK, now one wild guess as to the condition and attire of the women who called my dog the most disgusting thing she had ever seen...

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"That's the Lamest Dog I've Ever Seen"

This time Lyle and I were at East Beach sunbathing with my friend and one of Lyle's numerous aunts. (We'll call her "Trixie" for the sake of her own protection) We were just basking and minding our own business and nothing much of consequence happened for an hour or two. There was a group of Beavis and Butthead aged kids (yes a whole 5 years younger than us, the babies!) nearby, but they weren't causing any trouble or saying their stupid teenage things loud enough for us to hear and the smoke from their cigarettes wasn't blowing in our direction. Trixie decided they were harmless enough to bum a cigarette from, so she approached the youngsters and came back after chatting with them for 10 minutes, mission accomplished. I had seen them look over towards me when she was there, but rolled over before they could motion me over to join them. Trixie let me know that the Beavis and Buttheadites wanted her to tell me that they thought Lyle was lame.

I can't say that it shook me much to hear that this glowing example of Southern California youth thought my wonderpup was lame. I thought they were pretty lame, too, but this was one of those detestable situations when I couldn't think of a good comeback for the life of me. They left shortly after that and one of them addressed me,

"I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is the lamest dog I have ever seen."

I was still mentally blocked, so I just kind of looked up at him dumbly (not stupidly, just mutely! They were the stupid ones!) It didn't feel like an eternity at least, but after too long a period of quiet they all started walking away and the spokesman called back over his shoulder,

"But you can still come over to our house to drink beer with us if you want"

Finally my muteness left me and I muttered to Trixie,

"It's just penis envy"

(she said "penis" huh-huh huh-huh)
Trixie, bold vixen that she is, shouted this across the beach at them...much to my dismay and the shock of every family unit surrounding us on the beach. I then muttered,

"Well, if you think their parents aren't home yet, I guess we can go drink at their house with them"

This she saw fit to shout at them as well, but I think/hope they were out of range by then.

What you have to go through to defend some people's honor!

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"I thought he was poor and homeless"

OK, the only story not at the beach! This time Lyle and I were walking down State Street in downtown Santa Barbara. Not really shopping; just kind of looking around and people watching and being people-watched. We were between leashes at the time, so Lyle was wandering in my vicinity, straying to lift his leg on the occasional bush and sniff at this and that.

A young guy with a dog turned onto State and started walking in the same direction just ahead of us. Lyle thought they were marginally more interesting than I was so he slowly gained on them and started walking with them. I wasn't bothered by this since I was right behind them and could call Lyle back if I got too jealous.

This was until the guy and his dog started crossing the street at a red light. Lyle has enough bad habits without breaking traffic laws. So I called,

"Lyle, come here!"

He turned around and I could tell he was disappointed that I was pulling him away from his newfound friends, but he knows that I have his best interests at heart, so he started trotting towards me. The guy stopped, too, and turned around and said,

"Oh, that's your dog? I figured he was poor and homeless."

Poor and homeless? Lyle? Yeah, right! Maybe I'm just sheltered or something, but I've never seen a poor homeless fat Chihuahua before.

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"That's the Funniest Dog I've Ever Seen"

It was Lyle's second birthday and we had gone to Hendry's Beach to walk and watch the sunset. Being "the Dog Beach" that it is, we always meet lots of dogs there...every breed imaginable. The most unique one this day was an obese Basset Hound. He didn't look particulary old, but he had that fat and not-very-mobile look to him that obese dogs have.

Lyle and I were walking west while the Basset Hound was waddling east towards us. He saw Lyle and got really excited and started running--well, trying to run--towards us. I don't think I'd ever seen anything so hillarious, but I was civilized enough to hold my laughter in.

At this point the Basset's owner saw Lyle and said,

"That's the funniest dog I've ever seen!"

At this point I decided I wasn't quite as civilized anymore and muttered,

"Well at least my dog can run!"

The nerve of some people!

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"Those are the cutest dogs I've ever seen!"

Back to the beach...
Lyle and I were just wrapping up a nice long walk at Hendry's Beach when we saw something truly incredible. A woman was sitting on a towel with her husband and three dogs. But these weren't ordinary dogs...oh no! Well, one was, but that's because he was a Chihuahua. But the other two I cannot even begin to describe! I had to know what they were, so I swallowed the knot that was building in my throat and growled at Lyle to stop his screams of horror and approached the women and her entourage.

I could never be an actress, but I think even Tori Spelling would have been proud of the performance I gave this day!

"Those are the cutest dogs! What kind are they?" I asked

She first introduced Napolean, the puppy Chihuahua who had a major attitude and kept trying to attack Lyle, who was a mere 5 times his size! But then came the fun stuff! It's a pity I can't remember their names, but the imagine they've burned on my soul is there forever! The other two dogs were completely bald, but worlds different from each other.

Now some people call Chihuahuas bald, but that's when they just have very short hair...these dogs were BALD! The uglier one was a Chinese Crested. There are some sites about these mockeries of caninedom out there, but none of the pictures on them are near what this dog looked like. She/he/it (do these things reproduce?!?) was completely bald except for a shock of stringy white hair on the top of its head. It's body was whitish-pink with gross black birthmarks all over it. That's about as far as I want to go with describing it so as not to call that horrid imagine back into my mind too clearly.

The other one she claimed to be a Mexican Hairless. I haven't been able to find any sites on this breed, so that must not have been its AKC name. He wasn't quite so bad as he was black (so you couldn't see any veins through his skin) and he didn't have that awful topknot, but he did have a mole on his back with a tuft of hair growing out of it.

But you know what the weirdest thing about this was? Here was this lady with two hairless, and one very shorthaired dog, yet her husband was perhaps the hairiest individual I'd ever seen! He was bald up top, but he didn't have a shirt on and had a pelt covering his chest and back! I don't know if the dogs were her way of compensating for this, or if maybe she was trying to tell him something. You'd think that leaving SchickŪ coupons laying around the house would do the trick!

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