Wait a Minute, Who's in Charge Here?

word count: 684

    It looked like a pretty seedy place to me; the sign above the storefront was a colorful mix of garish purples, pinks and maroons, with the Seeing Eye in black, white, and blue above it.  I severely doubted the wisdom of taking Odin to see Madame Cherrie Pet Psychic.  He was my black Lab, I guess, by default, sort of.  No one else in the family would claim him, at their request I was here with him.  They all thought if we knew what he was thinking perhaps a few of his idiosyncrasies could be more effectively dealt with.

    Madame Cherrie, Pet Psychic of late night TV advertising fame entered as the curtained door swung shut behind me.  A young woman with a turban, peasant’s skirt and blouse came from behind a dark purple curtain near the back of the store.

    “Odin, what a pleasure to meet you, I have been expecting you,” she exclaimed as my dog immediately gave her a through sniffing while his tail rotated furiously in circles.

    I looked behind me, there was no one there?  “A, hello, Madame Cherrie?”

    The woman interrupted scratching behind the dog’s ears to look up at me, “Yes I know. You were expecting some one older and not so stunningly beautiful, and you would be…” she looked down at Odin, “Alex, yes Alex, Thank you Odin.”  She looked up at me, “Odin loves you very much, for some reason I can’t quite ascertain.  Now what can I do for you two beyond the obvious?”

      I was a bit stunned, in truth I didn’t know what to say as far as I knew she had no prior knowledge of our coming.  “Uh well, I guess…”

    “Here Alex let us come back into my private quarters.  I can see this is going to be a lengthy session, Odin tells me you have quite a few problems,”  with a flourish she held the curtain aside for us to pass into her “chambers” where  there were three chairs, a dog bed, and a table with a crystal ball.  I held onto my wallet and followed Odin in.

    Thinking to start with something relatively simple, I asked Madame Cherrie why Odin wagged his tail in a circle.

    She peered intently at Odin for a moment, “It’s caused by a slight deformity at the base of his tail, and he can’t help it when he gets overly excited.  Furthermore it hurts his feeling when you make fun him as he really has no control over it.  Shame on you Alex, really”

    “Oh, well sorry old man, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings,” I leaned over to scratch his head and he looked at Madame Cherrie.

    Again, she looked at him and then with surprise evident in her eyes she said, “He also doesn’t like it when you refer to him as ‘old man’, just because he is getting grey and he doesn’t move as quickly as he used to is no reason to comment on his age.  Additionally, he doesn’t make fun of the fact that you have to get up three times a night to use the toilet and it takes you five minutes to hobble the twenty feet from bed to bathroom.  Also, he doesn’t need senior dog food.”

    She stopped and cocked an ear towards him.  “He would also like you to know that he wouldn’t urinate in his food dish if you fed him something with some taste to it.  Really Alex shouldn’t you treat your most loyal companion better than this?”

    I sat stunned, I tried to stammer something, but the two of them were on a roll.

    “Furthermore,” she continued, “and he has heard you admit to this, your truck runs much better and gets superior mileage when he barks while riding in the back, so he wishes you would not make him ride in the cab with you at times, it smells funny in the cab.”

    “Yeah, but…”  I tried to interject.

    “And another thing,” she continued.  I sat back and resigned myself to a long afternoon, “Now Alex, blah blah blah…”

word count: 684