As you may know (because the title of my blog likely gave it away), I enjoy hockey. Watching it, playing it, swearing at it, all that good stuff. By and large so does my family, though they don’t watch it with quite the attentive fervour I do. When the Winnipeg Jets come on, my entire family can be found on one couch or another in front of one TV or another (we don’t always watch in the same room, though we often do) starting raptly at the screen and using words to describe the officiating crews that most civilized people wouldn’t use to describe their bowel movements (assuming they would describe them at all).
There is one member of my family, however, who is less than thrilled with hockey games, for whom the games are a stressful, noise filled interruption to an otherwise enjoyable evening. This family member will suffer through them as patiently as he can, but some days it becomes difficult for him. This family member is my dog. Meet Griffin.
I have often joked that, as by far the loudest member of the family, the fact the noise we make when watching hockey bothers Griffin is more than a little ironic. Nevertheless, nothing sends my dog into a frenzy quite like the reactions we (and especially I) have to the goings on in a hockey game.
Being a longtime fan, I know what I expect from the teams I watch. Being a longtime veteran of beer league dressing rooms, I have an arsenal of swear words at my disposal to make a sailor blush. Being, well, me, those words tend to come out when I watch hockey, whether in jubilation or disgust. The distinction doesn’t matter to Griffin.
When the swear words and the yelling start, good ol’ Griff, that faithful hound, assumes we are mad at him. He is a genius, as I’m sure you can tell.
He looks very wise, doesn’t he? Well, as soon as the swearing starts (and it almost always starts, especially when my long-suffering Avs play) that wise and dignified look is replaced by a look that is equal parts panic and remorse. Because I have dropped an “F” bomb on the TV, and I am therefore mad at him. He sprints into the room, with an apologetic look on his face befitting an animal who has done something really, unspeakably bad, and jumps and whines and begs to be petted, and therefore, forgiven.
It’s irritating at time, not because I don’t love the little beggar but because he’s never looked even remotely sorry when he actually has done something wrong. He once ate a third of a pot roast off the kitchen counter and looked no more apologetic than Matt Cooke after another suspension.
He once grabbed a steak off the counter (we have learned to watch our food more carefully since then), and ran down the hallway with it, with three of us running bellowing after him, as company stood, awestruck, in the doorway. He once put all four paws on the table when I turned my back and began lapping up my chocolate milk, and I was as confused as angry because what the hell does a dog want with chocolate milk?
His piece de resistance (which I’m sure I’ve spelled wrong, but whatever) was the year when, on Remembrance Day, he was upset we were ignoring him during the moment of silence, so he stole the toilet paper from the bathroom counter and ran around the house with it trailing behind him like a fluffy white cape, while we ran after him, torn between rage and uncontrollable laughter.
On none of those occasions did he look even remotely sorry. If anything, I’d say he rather enjoyed himself.
So when I swear at an inanimate object in a room two floors away from him, how he finds this to be his fault is beyond me, but he is more remorseful at this point than he has been for all his food stealing incidents combined (which make for an impressive rap sheet of lost refreshments and entrees).
So here, on the off chance he ever reads this blog, is the official final word. Griffin, when I swear at the men playing professional hockey on TV, I am not mad at you. You can stop fretting and panting and pacing and begging to be loved. I love you. Even when you do bad things (which isn’t as often as I make it sound) I still love you to pieces.
Now give back my damn sandwich!
Rob Mahon's Boardplay 