You would think Otterpop was done with her shady past. She’s 13 years old, according to my calculations. Something like that. She’s losing her hearing, and she snores really loud, and walks with a funny limp.

She is Otterpop, though. She gets to go with me wherever I go, because when I leave her home she howls and tells the other dogs to howl and tells them horrible stories along the lines of I’m never coming home and horrible disfigured witches are coming over to eat them and fly drones in the living room. She’s also is the one who doesn’t want to sit before dinner time. Dinner time can take a long time because of Otterpop. She chases chickens. She barks in Banksy’s face til she gives Otterpop the ball. And she jumps on the couch and smashes Gustavo. And she bosses Ruby around. And she hates all the dogs in our neighborhood, especially the black and tan pair of little dogs around the corner that bark at her from their window. And Rio next door. And Oliver in the other next door. And so on and so forth.

There are a lot of reasons why only I love Otterpop. She is not easy to love.

And tonight, we were walking along the bluffs. And another dog came along, and that dog said something mean to Otterpop. It said something mean to everybody, but Gustavo and Banksy were all la la la la la la and were so happy there was sun! And grass! And air! And Ruby wasn’t there because we were walking too far for Ruby.

But when that dog said something mean to Otterpop, Otterpop bristled. And she marches over to the dog. And I think oh oh. Does Otterpop still DO shit like this?

I keep moving on. “Come on, Otterpop.” There’s lots of space. A huge field, walking out to the bluff. Room for everybody.

But Otterpop goes over to the dog, who weighs about 50 lbs and looks pretty mean to me, and stands there in mean dog posture. And the mean dog is standing in mean dog posture. And both of them are all, yeah, muthatruckah. Just make a move. Double dare ya. And where most dogs eventually would stand down and diffuse and move on, and keep walking, OH NO. Not Otterpop. She can’t let things go. And she kind of snaps her snappy, horrible little teeth. And the mean dog is all I HATE YOU BITCH! AND I’M TAKING YOU OUT.

And it’s on. And Otterpop weighs like 15 lbs and the mean dog weighs like 50 and it’s on Otterpop and there’s a lot of noise. Otterpop is all NO I HATE YOU MORE YOU BITCH and the mean dog is all NO I HATE YOU MORE YOU SCRAWNY LITTLE MONKEY ASS. I’m hoping the mean dog isn’t like a killer mean, dog just a blustery mean dog, because I have no doubt that Otterpop actually is a mean dog and I run over and stomp my feet and the mean dog is all EEK! Because Otterpop is under the very large mean dog and there is so much dog noise and dog teeth noise. The EEK dog backs off but Otterpop is still all I HATE YOU BITCH I CAN STILL TAKE YOU! So I grab Otterpop and yank her out of the fray and fling her a little way and she hits the dirt pretty hard. Oops. But I was really mad. So now I’m a mean dog too.

I told the guy sorry and he said he was sorry too and we go our separate ways. I feel like a shit heel for flinging Otterpop but I’m also pretty mad at her, where did that come from, that was so 2008?

Once an Otterpop, always an Otterpop.