Defective – But We Love Him Anyway

It’s Friday, so I thought that of all the things that people might want reviewed to kick start their weekend, my dog Ragnar deserved some limelight for once in his fluffy life. So here you go, a review of my dog – because why not!
*Notice: No Ragnars were harmed in the making of this post, except by his own stupidity! ;-P

The Tl;Dr Version

Our dog is an idiot. A colossal twit of epic proportions. 2/10 for intelligence. He’s also a cute little cotton-wool bud with pretensions of sentience – he thinks he thinks, but there’s too much fluff in the way! 1/10 for ability to solve the mystery of the tree outside our door. He has very few practical applications, except perhaps as a foot-warmer. 3/10 because at least he tries. He is, however, a fluffy and wonderful anti-depressant, nurse, foot warmer (again), companion, widget, friend, secret-keeper and all round good boy. 100/10 because we love him and we wouldn’t change him for the world!!!

The Detailed Version

When considering the nature of a creature such as Ragnar, it is hard to conceive of the sheer magnitude of widget that must have come together in the universe at the point of his birth. Somehow, of all the needy and somewhat useless creatures that are born in any given moment of existential wizardry, one October night the world was introduced to a ball of fluff who would change lives… Probably for the better…!

We got Ragnar from someone who lives just down the road from us whose two bichons just happened to be walking by pregnant when we were moving in to our house. He’s fully pedigree and his father is a healthy stud dog who is probably related to half the bichon frises in Liverpool. It was really cool to be able to get to know the mum really well, and then subsequently to have met Ragnar just three days after he was born. Unless you are a breeder/have had a pregnant dog, there aren’t really that many people I don’t think who can claim to have literally known their dog for pretty much all of its life!

Since that moment, he has been an ever faithful companion in the lives of my wife and I, and much as he drives us round the bend sometimes, we both agree that getting him was one of the best decisions of our lives together. He’s so full of daft-doggie energy and exuberance that he just snuggles his way into the hearts of anyone who meets him. (That is, except, for my brother in law and my best friend – both of whom proclaim to wish him executed for crimes of pointlessness, but actually really like him and just don’t want to admit it!)

Tl;Dr jokes aside, he isn’t the most intelligent of dogs that I’ve ever met. A lot of things worry him and he is rather highly strung. But ultimately he does mean well. He has also been known to show brief flashes of genius – whether in guiding Helen perfectly out of a maze, or in figuring out how to use the zip of an outdoor swimming pool dome. It’s possible that he’s actually a mad scientist but just keeps forgetting it… It’s also possible that he’s just an idiot. He doesn’t really understand shadows – specifically from a tree outside our front door – and on one occasion he managed to spook himself with his own fart! This is the level that we are dealing with!!!

One of his ‘uses’, though, is as a built in burglar alarm. If that tree so much as moves, we know about it. Children on the street? We know about it. A garage door opening somewhere in the Merseyside region? He’s on it! He lives on a simple principle of: if in doubt, start shouting until the problem goes away. The irony is, on the very few occasions when there has been some need of alarm, whether it be the time we had a rat in the kitchen or coming across dodgy people in the street he has repeatedly proven himself to be an absolute coward who is more than happy to draw our attention to things – so long as we then sort them out for him. For all his bluster, he’s the epitome of bark worse than bite! (As a related sidebar, we often refer to him when coming home as a inter-continental ballistic bork because of his excitement levels whenever we come home.)

Which kinda leads me towards the conclusion of this little description of my fluffy sidekick – who is currently lying at my feet as I write this on the sofa. Despite his idiocy and cowardice, the annoyingness of his barking and his inability to function generally as a living creature, I really do love him to bits. He’s cute, warm, comforting, means well (i.e. is not always a good boy) and every single day makes me smile and laugh. Dogs are great, and ours might not be perfect – but he’s our little Rignuff/Fluff-Nugget/Widget/Rigs/Whatever-we-feel-like-calling-him-at-any-given-moment. He’s the best Ragnar he could be, and that will always be enough!