Ok, I have avoided the subject long enough. Lewis has a particular, peculiar, and persistent talent that he will share with anyone who gets close to him.  And I don’t mean emotionally.  I mean geographically and in fairly close proximity.

The embarrassing truth is…. Lewis slobbers. He slobbers like a beer keg that has lost its tap.

I remember watching the old movie, Beethoven (the dog, not the composer).  I remember all of the slobber or drooling scenes where the St. Bernard ran through the house not only wrecking everything in his path but leaving a trail of drool within a five-foot radius.

Even the words describing this “talent” are semi-disgusting. I mean think about it – slobbbbber and drooool.  Both of them mimic the slow, disgusting, stalactite drip emanating from this big bubba’s mouth.  Even the more scientific, formal term is not much better, “Hey, buddy, your *&^% dog just salivated all over me.”  See?

It’s not that I didn’t expect it.  I used to dog-sit a boxer puppy (in age, certainly not size).  Boxers also drool, because they belong to a classification of dogs known as brachycephalic dogs, meaning their nose is all squshed in (yeah well, I’m making it a word), which causes them to snore and drool along with some other socially unacceptable habits.  The owners of this boxer had it figured out, however.   Golf towels.  They hung from the collar perfectly.

That solution wouldn’t work for Lewis.  He would immediately try to chew up the towel and probably strangle himself in the process.  Besides, Lewis isn’t that breed of dog.  He doesn’t have a scientific excuse.  He’s just a big old slobber bucket.  He gets his salivary talents from the St. Bernard side of his family.  But why, why couldn’t he have inherited the rum cask and all that instead?  I’d even settle for a beer bottle and a church key (ask an old geezer type like me what that is).

While we don’t employ golf towels, we do go through enough hand towels to carpet a small house every week.  We have it down to an art.  We each have a slobber towel.  I have two – I was a boy scout after all.  Anyone who visits receives their own official slobber towel.  You don’t dare wander inside Lewis’ lair without adequate protection.  This stuff is like industrial glue.  I have no way to prove it, but I personally think that they put this stuff in a can and sell it as Fix-a-Flat.  It will make quick work of your best suit pants, too.

The Beethoven movie proved prophetic in one last, unfortunate way.  I thought it was just story telling when I first saw it onscreen.  But it’s true.  Oh, my is it true.  I call it the arcing slobber bomb.  My first personal experience with this phenomenon unfolded in slow motion.  Lewis came in from the yard after running around like a cray cray dog.   And as usual, he shook his head from side to side violently.  And then it happened.  Drool from his floppy, slobbery jowls broke loose and looped with precision up over his artic white shoulders and hit me right upside the head.  AAACK!!  I felt like Lucy in a Charlie Brown Christmas when Snoopy kisses her.  Dog germs, dog germs!

But this was Lewis.  We took him for better or worse – although this was a long way from the better part, it was still our Lewis.  What’s a few slobber bombs among friends?

Bar towel!

Postscript:   From the “Truth is Stranger than Fiction” department….As I finished this blog, Lewis came over to my desk to offer his assistance.  Being head high to the desktop enables his supervision of all things pertinent to his curiosity.  Once satisfied, he trots off to his next station, and I begin to put things away and shut off the computer.  As I picked up the mousepad, I discovered that he had struck again – Lewis had slimed me.