Gauge, Our Catdog

We call our oversized black lab, Gauge. Two things to know about him: he is a good 30 pounds overweight (not like I should talk) and he is a neurotic mess. He is scared of everything and will plow over a child at any given second if that creepy pink barbie car gets to close to him. When he isn't being torchered by barbie cars and children trying to ride him, he is asleep. He literally is a giant cat that takes up half of the living room.

Feeling like maybe a little exercise will do him some good... I took him for a walk. When I did try to walk him, we went one block and I dragged him home, up hill. That means, walking DOWN hill tired him out. Who gets tired walking down hill?  When he gets to go outside and run around like a normal happy dog, he doesn't. He literally cringes at the thought. He does his business and stands at the back door crying and barking to come back inside as if he has been left out there for hooooours. Oh, and if it's snowing or raining he opts to stay inside. He will see the weather is not suitable for him and literally walk away from the door and go lay down again. He may not have gone out in 13 hours, but he insist he can wait it out.  To get him outside when it's raining you literally have physically push him outside. Even then, he has just stood there and waited until I let him back inside. I figure he doesn't want to get his paws muddy. What a cat.

Now because of this lack in physical activity (and the eating of many fallen chicken nuggets) Gauge has at least 30 extra pounds on him. He quite literally has sleep apnea because of his weight. For real. He snores so loud that he HAS to sleep down stairs and even then keeps me awake at night. You would think the newborn would be the sleeping problem at night? Nope, not at all. It's Gauge. The snoring isn't even the worst part... the waking up is. At least once a night my morbidly obese dog wakes up in total panic realizing he has stopped breathing. He heaves and snorts so loudly that he sounds like he is being water-boarded. Once he realizes he is awake, he will give another few snorts before drifting back into a mind numbing snoring sleep again.

Since the exercise routine didn't pan out for old Gauge, this winter I attempted to put Gauge on a diet.  He glared at me for a month. No joke- he glared. Everytime the kids ate I would pick up anything they dropped in an effort to prevent Gauge from eating it.  Everytime I picked up food I could hear him calling me a bitch with his eyes. Well, maybe this summer we will have better luck getting old Gauge to get his workout on. At this point he could easily be excused for a Shar Pei. Maybe we will just stick with that?

Rescue Dog