Go Figure

Rooney seems to have a question about
Jay Caufield's analysis

If you draw breath in the City of Pittsburgh or in its many nearby townships, you are impacted by its sports.  Even if you don't happen to like those sports, they dictate, in some form or fashion, how you conduct your life.  People who don't care for football wait until the Steelers are playing to run their errands because the stores won't be crowded.  You check the home game schedules if you need to drive through downtown to see what kind of traffic you'll run into.  And every where you go you'll be subjected to talk about the teams (the city is completely abuzz right now by the monster trade Jim Rutherford pulled off in the middle of the game against Carolina; it even overshadowed the worry over Le'veon Bell's contract and smack talking the Pirates ownership).

The same is true for the animals in the city.  Local wildlife are harassed by the sound of fireworks on the Pirates Zambelli's Firework nights.  Pets have to learn, as I relayed about my own Ripley, to time their requests to go outside based on intermissions or halftime.  They have to learn not to be worried or scared when Mommy yells at the television.  And there are never ever any walkie-walks when the Pens or Steelers are playing.

Antonio Brown, please catch a stunning TD catch so I can sneak
one of these pizza rolls.

It's a fabric of all our lives.  And of course it's why I'm here.  My dogs grew up with this mindset and actually seem to like it for the most part.  Creatures of habit, it's their habit.  The sound of hockey means Mom's going to be sitting down for a while, so it's perfect cuddle time.  And if there are snackies about, if there's an exciting play, you might be able to sneak one.  Sports is grand for pets!

Well, Sirius seems to have a serious opinion in the age old debate whether figure skating is a sport or not.  And, I can tell you that he is one of two males in this house that is mighty glad that, whatever it is, it's over for a while.  He did not like it!

Now before you say that's absurd, a dog can't differentiate between anything else on television, I can tell you I have only my limited social experiment to back me up, but he can.  And he was not a fan.  Or, more to the point, he did not want me to be a fan of it.

Figure skating is a different kind of skating from hockey.  One can take their eye off the screen in hockey.  While risking missing a great play or, worse yet, a goal, there are periods where one's attention can wander.  And mine does.  I Tweet a lot during hockey as a way to dampen my nerves, but I also pay attention to the dogs more.  Figure skating is all in. There is not a second in a program where, as a true fan of the sport one can afford to look away.  Every stroke of the blade is going to be part of the component score.  He did not like that total absorption.

He seemed to roll with it through the team competition, but when the pairs started, he had enough.  I posted the photo of him standing over me while it was on last week.  That kind of "look at me" behavior went on all through the dramatic women's final.  I have bruises where he would leap at me like he does with Geddy trying to get me to play (he's by far the biggest of the dogs now and very strong).  If that didn't work he'd paw at me.  If all else failed, he simply look at me and bark.

When my oldest daughter was small, I learned the art of reading to her with my eyes glued to Katarina Witt on the screen (I could - and might be able to still - recite The Polite Elephant, Are You My Mother, and Where the Wild Things Are by heart).  She was happy with that.  So I tried the same tact with Sirius.  I would play tug and watch.  That worked to an extent, but he's a smart dog.  He knew he wasn't the center of attention and would demand more.

He's just bored, you say.  Probably.  This has been a long tough winter for the dogs, and it's been raining for what seems like forever.  But I did a little experiment a couple of times.  One rare night when there was no skating on, I put on Alien.  He was perfectly calm.  And of course, I wasn't missing hockey for skating - that's what DVR's are for.  He behaved as normal during hockey.

Back to normal

I finally had to conclude after two solid weeks of this behavior that he was jealous of the attention it demands.  Of course, to be totally scientific, we'll have to try and replicate the results during next month's World Championship, but for now, I owe him a little Baby and Me time, so if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play in the mud.