Okay, so there I am in Bel Air** at a Thing. At one point I go off a wandering to see if there's any shrimp left, I glance into the back yard, see the kids playing in the pool, and near them a pony sitting in the shade.
I'm thinking...A pony in a backyard in Bel Air. But of course.
Then the pony moved to where I could see all of it. I'm like THAT'S A DOG. It walks right up to the sliding glass door, I'm about to turn and run, but the giant dog leans its head on the glass and gives me the Puppy Dog Eyes Treatment.
The dog was saying I luuuuuuv you. I am so saaaaad I have been banished from the house for the afternoon. I am loooooonely.
I'm not a dog person, big dogs scare me. After confirming with those involved that this wasn't an act to lure me out there so it could kill me, I decided to go pet the giant dog at least once.
You can say the dog is 250-lbs and the size of a small horse, but you don't know what that actually means until you have experienced it. Here, have a paw!
She's an English mastiff, the breed featured in the classic Sherlock Holmes story. Clearly Sir Conan never met an actual mastiff. She is the most useless guard dog in the history of the universe.
It was difficult to get her to sit still, and I couldn't get all of her into one shot. Here's her head. Note the SIZE of that head. That head is not photoshopped!
To outsiders, she is a horse-sized dog. But in her mind she is a teacup chihuahua fond of belly rubs. Here she is going ruuuub mah belllllly.
Twice she knocked me to the ground, accidentally, because she doesn't realize she's actually 250-lbs, and that was quite a slobber-fest. She just wanted to get in my face so she could share her slobber of luuuuuv. That's what she did the first time she got me down. The second time she kind of laid across my legs going i luuuuuve you.
Then she tried to eat the CrackBerry, which she luuuuuved so much because it was making clicky noises. i luuuuuuve this she said, as she tried to eat it.
When I got home, cat runs up to greet me as usual. When I bent down to pat his head he froze, sniffed, turned and ran as fast as he possibly could into the very back of the house. At that point I noticed I was covered with blobs of dried giant dog slobber. I didn't see the cat again until I got out of the shower.
So. The house was lovely, the people nice, the event cool. But to be completely honest, I liked the giant useless guard dog best.
** Bel Air is like Beverly Hills, but with even more money.
