Ozzy, The World’s Most Stupidest Dog!
Long before the Ducklings, we had one dog, Teri. Or as I called her in my postings at The Motley Fool, Dippy The Wonder Dog. Teri is a Jack Russell Terrier, or to give you a better frame of reference, a smooth-coat version of Frasier’s “Eddie”, or PBS’s “Wishbone”.
Teri is quite smart, is easily trainable and is housebroken. And she could easily imitate the pose of the “Dog sitting in front of the Victrola” RCA ad, as well.
But we had Teri for a year and felt that Teri needed a playmate. Two adult human beings and one very apathetic cat weren’t enough to keep Teri entertained.
We had spent a good chunk of change on Teri, we had gotten
her from a farm where the owner raised
So I wasn’t looking forward to spending another hunk of money on another dog.
But there was a pet store in which we frequented to get supplies for Teri quite often, so we always saw this forlorn Rat Terrier every time we went into the store. This was when the “101 Dalmations” live-action movie came out, so small dogs like Rat Terriers weren’t all that popular. In fact, in this military base town we lived in, having a LITTLE dog wasn’t cool. You had to own a big, mean, nasty Rottweiler, German Shepherd, or angry Pit Bull to prove how manly you were (and how small your pee-pee was). So this Rat Terrier had a very low price…and a very dumb look on his face. He always had this “Who, ME?” look.
Because of the laws of supply and demand, this Rat Terrier was going for a fire sale price. The poor puppy had spent his entire first 5 months of his life in a small cage in this pet store. MrsDuck felt more and more sorry for this little Rat Terrier puppy and said we needed to “rescue” him! “Rescue” him? This puppy gets watered and fed all the time and licks his own privates whenever he wants. If I had a life like that, would I feel bad? (Don’t answer that…)
For those of you who would suggest the local animal shelter or pound to get a dog, at the time, I was absolutely of the opinion that I didn’t want somebody else’s problem. For all I know, that cute Doberman at the pound could have been abandoned here by its previous owner because it pooped all over the house, bit all the neighbors, and hogged the TV remote to watch Home Shopping Network all day. And I HATE Home Shopping Network! So getting an abandoned dog from the shelter was not an option for me.
Back to this dog. I relented and MrsDuck haggled with the pet store for this dog and got the little guy for about 1/5 the cost of what Teri cost.
We bring him home. What will we call him?
The dog makes his way over to one of Teri’s chew toys and RIPS the head off of it in one quick motion.
OZZY!
“Ozzy, why Ozzy?” MrsDuck would ask. It’s because he BITES THE HEADS off things, just like his namesake. (Thinking of Ozzy Osbourne’s bat-biting incident in DesMoines back in the 80’s.)
Ozzy and Teri got along fine. It took awhile for Ozzy to get used to life outside a cage. Since it had little or no exercise, his rear legs weren’t used to running. He would sort of “hop” with them in unison, like a rabbit, to propel himself around the yard. He looked like a rabbit with funny ears. Soon, he would run around the yard like all other dogs do. But also, he would POOP like other dogs would do, too.
No, I won’t go into all the details of housebreaking a puppy, just a few things that made life around the house interesting, though. At night, or whenever we were not at home, we’d keep Ozzy and Teri in the kitche. But the opening of the kitchen to the living room was 8 feet wide, so we couldn’t install a baby gate or something like that. We bought a couple of “scat mats” that lay across the entryway to the kitchen. These are plastic floor mats that plugged into the wall and have a wire embedded on the surface of the mat, such that if you or a small mammal stepped on it, you would get a shock. Not a big shock, just an irritating sting. The idea was that the sting would frighten the dogs and MOST dogs would usually being anywhere near that mat after the first “sting”.
Not Ozzy. Ozzy could never quite “get” anything or understand anything the first time. Teri would avoid the mat like a torch in a monster movie. Not so with Ozzy. He would repeatedly step on the mat, get shocked, let out a “YIP!”, jump UP (not away) from the mat, land ON the mat, get shocked again, go “YIP!” again, jump UP (again), land ON the mat (again), and repeat ad infinitum until he would get tired or accidentally fall out of the range of the scat mat.
Stupid dog. Dumb as a bag of hammers.
Although Teri was fairly easy to train, both dogs still would easily get distracted and run out of the yard when they saw something interesting to chase, say like a neighborhood boy on a bicycle, or a M1 Abrams tank. So we bought and installed a “radio fence”. The way this works is that a 24-gauge wire is buried around the perimeter of the yard, just a few inches deep and is connected to a transmitter. A weak radio signal is broadcast. The dogs wear a little battery-operated receiver to pick up this signal when they wander NEAR the perimeter wire and the collars would make a BEEPing noise. If you got too close, the collars would SHOCK the dog and in theory, the dog would soon learn to avoid the edge of the property where the wire was buried.
Now Teri learned to stay away from the edge of the property in only ONE day and just maybe about 3 tries to leave the yard. When Teri would start to hear the BEEPING, she’d know to stay back before getting shocked.
Not Ozzy. Ozzy would nonchalantly wander over to the edge of the yard, hear the beep, look around and try to see where the beep was coming from (STUPID DOG!) and then walk further OUT to the edge and the shocks would start. No, Ozzy didn’t back away, he just SAT THERE, taking his paw and waved it around the air like he was trying to swat a bee or something. “HEY! WHAT IS THAT STING?” he appeared to “think” to himself as he sat there for a good THREE minutes getting his neck shocked off.
He did all the other things that STUPID dogs would do, such as chasing parked cars, and only fighting other dogs BIGGER than himself.
Stupid DOG. He’s just two tacos short of a combination plate.
In addition to that, Ozzy never DID get completely housebroken either. After buying floor cleaner every week by the 5-gallon bucket, we figured the best thing to do would be to advertise and find him a new home where somebody could keep him and watch him all day so he doesn’t kill himself doing something stupid. Ozzy is now his spending days, playing outside everyday at a home in rural Georgia, the new owner stays home all day and they can play together.
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