My family has owned American Hairless Terriers (AHTs) — rat terriers who’ve been bred to be hairless — for decades. This is a story about one of the first we owned.

Sofie was a typical AHT. She was about mid-shin in height, and she had the run of our fenced-in yard in Maryland. One trick I taught her was “Belly Rub”. I’d shout that at her, and she’d flop on her back. I would then rub her exposed belly, much to her delight.

We never let our dogs roam free; any time we took them for walks, we would have them in harnesses and on leashes. One time, as I was about to take Sofie for a walk around the neighborhood, I stopped to talk to a neighbor. Sofie was impatient, pulling hard on the leash.

Then, suddenly, she slipped out of the harness and started running down the (thankfully not busy) street as fast as she could. (This breed is amazingly fast.)

I started chasing her but wasn’t gaining on her because I was wearing sandals. I then had an idea.

Me: “Sofie! Belly rub!”

Sofie quickly ran onto someone’s lawn and then flopped onto her back to await her belly rub. Her quick escape was foiled by conditioned training.

My mother told me this story. When I was about two years old, I was appearing to be mute, as I only talked when I deemed it necessary which was, apparently, quite rare.

One day, when we were visiting my great-grandparents, my great-grandfather declared:

Great-Grandfather: “I will teach this girl how to talk.”

He walked over to where I was drawing, grabbed an item in each hand, and started “teaching” me.

Great-Grandfather: “This is a pen. Say after me, my girl: pen. A p-e-n.”

After a while, I had enough, shook my head, and said:

Me: “No pen. Pens. Two.”

Then, I went back to drawing like nothing had happened, while my parents nearly died laughing.

This was back when my border collie and I still lived at my parents’ house. I owned a bearded dragon who was kept in my bedroom. One night, I was downstairs focusing on college work and my mum had gone up for a shower. My dog was relaxing next to me. All of a sudden, he bolted upright, staring ahead with his head to one side. Then, he took off upstairs.

At the time, I didn’t think much of it; he sometimes liked to greet the resident humans after their traumatic time in the shower. I thought my mum had just come back out and he wanted to make sure she hadn’t drowned. But then, I heard a yell from upstairs.

Mum: “[My Name], your bedroom is full of smoke!”

I ran upstairs and found out that, indeed, the room was full of smoke. Something had gone wrong with the heat lamp in my bearded dragon’s enclosure. Perhaps the lizard had been climbing and the fitting wasn’t tight enough, but the whole thing had spun toward the back of the wooden vivarium and was slowly burning through. And yes, I do still kick myself about this. It was an eighty-watt bulb pointing at wood. You can imagine.

It turned out that my mum had come out of the bathroom to see my dog scratching at my bedroom door. She’d opened it, and that’s when she’d seen the smoke.

I immediately took the lizard out and put him in a temporary enclosure while I made sure his usual was completely free of smoke and while my dad drilled the fitting in place.

That was probably eight years ago. My border collie is now almost twelve, and my bearded dragon sadly passed away in 2021, aged thirteen. My dog still loves to check in on his little critter friends, now consisting of a hamster and guinea pigs! In fact, the hamster has moved into the four-foot-long refurbished and hamster-proofed vivarium my lizard used to live in. It still has the burn marks. I still feel terrible. But I’m eternally grateful to my pooch for that and all the times he’s tolerated and supported me through poor mental health.

Related:
Collies Without Borders
Border Collies Are Focused… On Something…
No Borders On That Guy’s Rudeness
No Borders On That Kid’s Kindness
No Borders On That Lady’s Crazy

In November of last year, I gave birth to our first baby. It’s the first in my family and the sixth in my husband’s family. All six kids are boys, and my mother-in-law has got some sick baby girl rabies.

From the moment we made the announcement, [Mother-In-Law] convinced herself that I was pregnant with a girl.

Me: “[Mother-In-Law], as soon as we know the baby’s gender, you will be the first one to know.”

We told her it was a boy; she still was convinced it was a girl. She told the whole side of the family it was a girl. I corrected her, but she told them I was just annoyed because I wanted a boy first. I wanted a healthy baby; I didn’t give a d*** about the sex. She also told them we were naming the girl after her mom, which we would never do because my husband hates his grandma.

When the baby shower gifts started to come, I noticed a lot of things that weren’t on the registry, and embroidered things with [Grandma]’s name. And it didn’t matter that we’d told them the baby’s gender and name and made clear that we were not lying about the gender. Everyone believed [Mother-In-Law].

Well, the baby was born. And imagine the surprise… It was a boy, just LIKE WE HAD BEEN TELLING EVERYONE. The problem (for them) was that now the baby had plenty of “girly” clothes, pink onesies, etc., and we dressed our baby with them, especially for video calls with [Husband]’s family and for pictures for them.

After one Saturday call, [Mother-In-Law] called us to scream at us.

Mother-In-Law: “You’re making the elders uncomfortable, not sticking to a masculine color scheme with the baby clothes! You need to stop this childishness. I just thought your belly shape was more like a girl than a boy.”

Me: “We are not changing [Baby]’s clothes. Just wait until the dresses fit; he will look adorable.”

My mom was a big foodie and loved cooking for people. Barbecues were always a huge thing with my family, and my mom loved to try new recipes. She also never made a fuss if anyone asked for accommodations. She was always willing to make adjustments so everyone could have at least something they could enjoy, and everyone was welcome at her table.

Once, my nephew had a girlfriend who was… a bit strange. Let’s call her Cleo.

It wasn’t so much that she was inherently a bad person, but her thought processes were sometimes hard to follow, and she had a tendency to hog conversations and make them all about her.

Cleo also followed all kinds of trends when she thought it was fancy. If social media hyped depression, she was all depressed and proclaimed that happily to everyone, totally oblivious to the fact that several of my family members battled with diagnosed depression and that my mom and I had to spend significant time in mental hospitals for depression.

When one of Cleo’s favorite actors was advocating for women’s rights, she became a ferocious women’s rights activist, blaming all women around her for not caring enough and buying into the “paternal narrative” — whatever that was supposed to mean. She accused them of wanting all women to be stay-at-home moms, completely disregarding that my family is mostly blue-collar and all the women have been workers all their lives. No one, from my great-grandmother to me today, has ever been a stay-at-home mom.

When social media claimed pescatarians were en vogue, Cleo claimed to be a pescatarian — no matter that she didn’t eat fish at all. She proclaimed that it meant eating only chicken.

At the time that this story happened, Cleo got it into her head that she was a vegan. And no, being vegan was not a problem for my family, nor would it have been a problem on this special day if Cleo really was a vegan. The problem was that she wasn’t a vegan; she just fancied herself being one.

We had a barbecue planned, and my whole family was there. I also brought my friend and roomie who was a vegetarian. My mom created a group chat on a messenger app and asked [Friend] and Cleo what they would like to eat. When Cleo answered that she didn’t know what she could ask for, my mom offered several options for them to choose from. [Friend] said, to make it easier for my mom, she would also eat the vegan option Cleo chose, knowing from my tales that Cleo was a very picky eater.

Cleo then wrote that some veggie shashlik and hummus would be nice, so my mom made that. She told both of them specifically what she planned to put in the shashlik. She also made several salads and a chimichanga for dips along with them, as well as vegan mayonnaise, the promised hummus, and several other vegan-friendly dips to choose from, and foil-baked potatoes. Cleo knew exactly what would be there for her to eat and happily agreed with everything, enthusiastically writing back how much she would enjoy eating all that. Despite being asked repeatedly if she would like anything else, she always answered everything was fine.

Knowing how nitpicky Cleo was, my nephew brought a separate grill to put the veggie options on so they wouldn’t touch the meat. This was solely for her since [Friend] doesn’t really care much about all this; she’s the type who eats what’s available as long as it is vegetarian-friendly. She’s also a bit picky, but when push comes to shove, she eats bread and some salad and is happy as a clam; she doesn’t make her own peckishness into other people’s problems.

The day came, and everything was finished. Madam Cleo walked over to the vegan dishes, scrunched her nose, and proclaimed:

Cleo: “I can’t eat all this; it’s not really vegan.”

After pushing a bit, she proclaimed:

Cleo: “I don’t think this will taste good, either; it looks strange.”

Then, she marched to the kitchen and prepared herself some toast with butter! Yes, real butter,  which was totally not vegan. She could not eat the butter right there at the table — no, that was not vegan — but it had to be the new piece of butter from the fridge and the store-bought toast, because — and this is a verbal citation — “homemade bread is NEVER vegan!”

Cleo then proceeded to complain that no one had asked her for her opinion before, although she had been engaging in a messenger group generated just exactly for that and not telling anyone anything and agreeing with everything for a whole week!

When [Friend] very gently inquired why she didn’t say anything during the chats, Cleo claimed that she felt overwhelmed by my mom’s suggestions and didn’t dare to voice her concerns after my mom had “decided” what she should eat.

At this point, my mom was fuming, so I decided to keep Cleo away for the rest of the evening and engage her in talk so my mom and the rest of the family would not have to deal with her silly and self-centered nonsense.

[Friend] stayed with me because she knew me and found my way of dealing with such situations amusing.

So, we engaged in talk. I prompted Cleo to tell me about herself, and she willingly obliged.

All in all, I kept her occupied for several hours, never letting her feel bad, and constantly keeping her talking. [Friend] quietly sat next to me, dipping bits of her freshly made and completely vegan baguette in fresh olive oil and salt, smiling and nodding to Cleo who explained to her how that was not vegan.

My family members dipped in and out of the conversation, looking at me with disbelief and shaking their heads, but gracefully not saying anything to aggravate her.

When it was time to say goodbye, Cleo beamed at me and proclaimed loudly:

Cleo: “Thank you for the nice evening! It was a joy talking with you! It’s really nice to meet someone who’s open to new knowledge.”

Then, she left her stage.

My sister approached me.

Sister: “I listened to part of that conversation. How the h*** did you stand that? How could you be so calm? I only listened to bits here and there, but I wanted to strangle her halfway through.”

[Friend] chuckled and answered before I could.

Friend: “Don’t you remember what [My Name] does for a living? She works from home, so I listen to her when she works. Cleo might think she got a nice conversation, but I know what she really got: the world’s longest technician service call! [My Name] pretended it was a work call; she even used her script to prompt her in between. Cleo didn’t know it, but she called her Internet provider today and got troubleshooting. What you heard was her giving her technician a top rating. I just waited all the time for [My Name] to tell her to restart her router.”

And what could I say? She was right; that’s exactly what I did. I never thought that eight years as a tier-three service technician working escalations at a call center for a service provider would pay out this way. But I guess if you’re able to get a non-cooperative idiot to follow your instructions to get his equipment to run properly without shouting at him for his stupidity, keeping a delusional wannabe vegan with a mission to tell everyone their opinion away from your mom is a piece of cake.

The story has a happy ending; my nephew ditched her later. He’s now dating another girl. She’s a vegan for real. She really enjoys barbecues, and guess what? She’s always happy with the food because she helps with preparations and cooks her preferred food herself.