Chills

The coolest thing just happened. I tried to write a blog entry for today and ended up with a column for next week. You know what that means, right?

That means this entry probably won’t be very good. Sorry.

So, because I don’t really have much of an imagination, and because I just spent several hours (read: two) on the post that evolved into a column (I love it when that happens, by the way—it’s like taking a girl on a first date only to find her foot in your crotch before the dessert arrives), I’m gonna write about the dog I lived with in college. His name was Chills.

Now, lots of people will tell you that they have the coolest dog ever. Lots of people are wrong. The coolest dog ever is a mutt named Chills (half Red Bone Hound, half Rhodesian Ridgeback). Don’t believe he was the coolest dog ever? That’s fine. I got more words.

Chills was a music critic. Like most hound dogs, Chills was prone to howling. Unlike most hound dogs, Chills would only howl along with songs that he liked. And, even when he was exhausted and didn’t feel like singing, he would still sing along with “Mrs. Robinson” by Simon and Garfunkle. No matter what. I mean, if we wanted to watch “The Graduate”, we had to lock Chills out of the house. He preferred melodious tunes to hard rock, and was also a fan of The Grateful Dead, Phish, and 311. And he hated Little Richard with a passion I’ve never seen in any animal before or since. If there was a Little Richard interview on VH1, Chills would attack the TV (which caused us quite the dilemma. I mean, we wanted the dog to hate whichever musical artist he chose, but we also wanted our TV). In the end, we just stopped watching VH1.

Chills was a beer connoisseur. The dog simply wouldn’t drink the Natty or the Keystone or any of the other cheap beers. At parties, he would go around and sniff the cups of party goers ‘till he found the good beer. And if he found a keg of Killian’s or Heineken, he would camp out next to it all night. He was literally a party animal.

Chills was invited to more parties than any of the humans in my old college apartment. People loved Chills because, even though the dog didn’t do many tricks, he endeared himself to people by running into their apartments and camping out on their couches as if he belonged in the room (he even sat like a human). Every time I walked that dog, I met people that he knew and I didn’t. Chills was cooler than me. And I had to live with that.

One day, my roommate, Doug (the dog’s owner) took Chills to get neutered. When they returned, Chills ran directly up the stairs to Doug’s room and shit on his pillow (Doug's pillow, not the dog's). It’ll take a lot of funny stuff in my life to push that moment out of my top ten.

So now you know a little about the coolest dog ever. And I don’t care what you say. Your dog was not as cool.