Who is it that says dogs are colorblind? They are very wrong. My dog most definitely knows the color brown.

This I know because he desperately hates the UPS truck. And its denizens. (sorry drivers!)

This I know because whenever he sees a UPS truck he yells at it. Loudly. At the top of his lungs, and, totally, by the way, at the top of my patience.

The truck rolls down our street, he furiously barks.

It stops and delivers Zuilly or Zappos or Amazon across the street. He goes off.

And, sorry and so sad and so very wrong, when a poor driver has to come up on our porch for our delivery. Super sorry, since I’m a very active Amazon Prime member. Poor driver endures shock and awe from the red-coated full-throated beast. Really, I am sorry. Really. I am.

Total hate from our sweet oversized over-bellowed hound.

In our house it’s awful. So awful that would yell at him to shut the eff up. Where “eff” is a very different word, but Loyal Reader, I don’t want to say this word in front of you.

I did some research and found that when I was yelling AT him to shut up, he thought that I was yelling WITH him. What? So I’m screaming at him to shut up and he’s like, YEAH! We are getting those muthafuckas to leave us alone.

Dear Lord, what have I begot?

Next round. He yells at the UPS driver and gets all physical. He knocks over all the flowers, and I see that all the pillows are on the floor. He’s on the couch standing in kill stance. YELLING at the top of his lungs and throat and whatever else a hound dog has. Trust me, it is loud. No. Seriously. LOUD.

So I walk up and grab his collar and say in a whisper, “This is not your job. Leave it.” And I repeat this about twenty million gazillion billion times, always in a whisper. [while in my head I am screaming YOU STUPID SHIT DOG SHUT THE FUCK UP, but he never hears this. He just hears the gentle whisper.]

“This is not your job. Leave it.”

And I drag his 85 pounds of muscle ass off of the couch where he is in total KILL mode. That means that all four of his strong-ass legs are planted strong, that his tail is rocket straight, that his muzzle is pointed and strained toward the perceived [totally wrongly because there is no threat] danger.

As I drag him by his collar he pulls back to the bullshit threat. Bullshit because there IS NO THREAT. But, because he is still doing his job since he is the dog in the house, I continue to whisper to him the alternative. [Whispering is getting increasingly difficult, if you couldn’t figure that out on your own. Just saying.]

He fights me for the effort that it takes for me to pull him off–and this is a SIGNIFICANT effort. I don’t go to the gym because I build super-body-strength since I am pulling this freak around. Maybe I should thank him. Or give him a doggie-treat.

Anyway, he pulls back so he can alert from his spot looking out the window. He is up on the couch. He is protecting us all. Standing on the couch gives this big dog another couple feet. So he’s at about five-feet at the snout, and he’s at full yell.

I’m pulling him off the couch, [pretending to] always whispering, but, frankly, if that stupid effin’ dog knocks me over [again!!] I will likely maybe lose my shit.

I’m pulling him off the couch with all my weak-strength and all the time gently whispering that it’s not his fukcing job and walking him away from the window and, then, magically, when we walk into the next room he suddenly becomes complacent.

What?

I walk him toward the bathroom, and as I get closer he knows that he needs to go to a place and pull himself together.

We call it “Puppy Time Out.”

I escort him, at this point easily, to the bathroom and put him inside. I tell him to chill out.

And, he does.

Seriously. This dog is smart. He knows that once I gather my strength and pull him off the couch it’s over. Totally over. And he needs to pull himself together. And sit pretty. It’s over. And the damn truck will be gone. And he will sit, like a little dream whip, in a little ball, on the couch.

“Stop, Doc!,” you say. “So why does this indicate color awareness??”

When he sees someone on the street [i could do an entire separate series of his street insanity] wearing a boxy brown jacket, he wants to do great bodily harm to him.

I know this because my arms are much longer than they were the day before we saw that poor man standing on the other side of the street with his brown HH or North Face or whatever brown coat with a hood.  I was frantically holding that mass of dog-muscle away from the guy with the brown jacket as he was punished via very loud and vicious-sounding barking. I was so embarrassed. If the guy was wearing a blue or red or green or khaki jacket, no yelling.

[But if he was wearing a church lady hat, all bets off. The dog hates hats, too. That is another post.]

I don’t get this. Like at all. But I love my crazy red dog.