(Dad, moving with impressive speed, grabs it over the back and heads for the Box by the TV. Mom had prepared it, complete with newspaper, a hot water bottle, a towel, and an old wind-up alarm clock)
MOM: It's peeing on the carpet! Robert!
DAD: %$@#%$!
(Kids scream like Godzilla is looking in the window. The small leaking dog flying above the carpet looks like one of those planes trying to put out a forest fire.)
MOM: Just leave it in there until it's empty.
(Dad and Mom get toilet paper and something liquid to work on the carpet. The kids were still banished to the couch. 5 minutes pass as it whimpers and complains in the Box while the kids do the same on the couch.)
KIDS: C'mon, let it out . . . it's empty . . . awww, it's scared . . . Pleeeeeeeeease?
(It's freed once more to be deposited into the middle of the now slightly damp carpet. It looks around, stumble-walking through the shag. Now instead of lowering its hips, it humps its back and walks on its tip-toes.)
MOM: Robert-Robert-it's-pooping-Robert!
(Godzilla is at the window again. The kids add jumping on the couch to the screaming. Dad drops to all fours and follows little raised tail around the living room, holding a wad of TP behind the straining little dog. He bellows a frustrated comment.)
DAD: You've never had service like this, Dog!
(The sight of Dad, crawling around the floor following the little dog with wadded TP, as he collected little brown cylinders would linger for years. We wouldn't eat Tootsie-rolls until high school,)
MOM: In the box, Robert. Put it in the Box!
(The dog is empty - unless there's something in its stomach - as Dad puts it in the Box.)
DAD: We've only had you 5 minutes, Dog, and you've done two things you're never supposed to do in the house!
KIDS: Can't we keep it? . . . We gotta keep it! . . . Don't throw it away!
No chance of that happening.
It, Tinkerbell aka Tink, was the first of probably two dozen Chihuahuas to wander our living room carpet and, yes, some of them did leave their mark.
But Tink was the first -
and she helped make a great memory on Christmas Eve.