Well, I said it.

We have a dog, Buffy. She's a pure-bred collie (like Lassie). I might have mentioned her before--we got her when the veterinarian called and said "The owners want to put this dog to sleep. We don't think they should, and they've said that if we can find the dog a home right away, that we won't have to put her to sleep. Can you help?"

I never really wanted a collie. I much prefer short-haired dogs. I hate messing around with grooming stuff. But Buffy is a wonderful dog, no bad habits, very gentle, just perfect. Except the fur. See, we live in the country, and no matter what I do, there is burdock. It's in places where I never even look. It's everywhere, even when I make a huge effort to eradicate it, it's still there.

And Buffy is a bur magnet. We don't have a fenced in yard, but she stays pretty close to the house most of the time. It seems, though, that no matter what, she will ALWAYS find the burdock and come home with tons of burs woven into her long fur. Because it is next to impossible for me to have time to remove burs every single day from this dog, I requested/demanded that Buffy be on a leash all the time. Even when she's being brought to the chain outside, because if she even has one minute of freedom, she will have burs. Then I brought her and had her professionally groomed (this was last spring).

DH, however, doesn't seem to think the rule applies to him. Several times now, I have had to tell DH, "I am not buying one more drop of pop until you remove all the burs from Buffy's fur." He would remove the burs (with a lot of grumbling) and still not learn from the experience. This past week, however, I got sick of it. Over Christmas, even my mother in law was trying to remove burs from Buffy. So I went ahead and de-burred her as best I could. Then last night I noticed that she has burs AGAIN!!!! So I said to DH, "Have you been letting Buffy run loose again?" and he said, "Well, not all the time...." and I blew a gasket. I told him that Buffy is full of burs because he is lazy. Yep, I used the "L" word. I probably should use it more often. But it really applies here, because what it boils down to is that DH is too damn lazy to bend over and put a leash on the dog, walk her ten steps to the tie-out, and remove the leash and attach the tie-out.

I think he was shocked that I said that. Right away he got that "wallowing" voice and said "I'll take care of her burs tomorrow night." We'll see if he does, but it got me wondering if maybe I need to point this out more often. Because, really, he is absolutely the most lazy person I've ever met. Although DD ranks a close second.

I have tried to avoid using the "L" word, because I guess I didn't want to admit it to myself. DH was always such a hard worker when we first got married. And I didn't want to accuse him of being Lazy if the problem really was a mental illness issue. But it really doesn't take that much ambition to hook up the darn dog. Not only that, but hooking up the dog saves me money and time. So shouldn't he WANT to do that? I dunno.