The Bad Boy Syndrome

We are animal lovers, me, my wife and kids.

We have two dogs, one cat; thou technically the cat adopted us and a rabbit.

We used to have a fish too but after several premature deaths, we decided we are definitively not fish people.

We adopted the first dog, Daisy, from an animal shelter. We believe adopting from a shelter is much better than buying from a pet store.

The cat, Oreo, was a stray cat and we happened to be on his hunting grounds. We start leaving cat food outside and now he’s sleeping in our house, but most of the day he just hangs out around the house. The rabbit is my older daughter pet and the second dog Ollie is a rescue.

We found Ollie running in the streets. No collar, no tag, no chip. He had a rope around his neck and it looked he chewed it up to escape. He was badly abused; we believe they kicked him because he has a fear of feet and legs and still attacks and bites people’s ankles.

He was less than one year old, still a puppy, and didn’t have any kind of education.

He pooped and peed everywhere in the house. He destroyed our living room rug. He destroyed several pairs of shoes until he learned to play with his toys.
He destroyed the mail and would do the same to the mailman if he could get to him. And of course, he bit everybody.

After several months of training, we decided to put him up for adoption.

He was almost perfect, young, cute, potty trained but with a little leftover issue.

On the day of the adoption, he bit the lady that came to adopt him.

So that little habit of biting everybody he didn’t know, made him practically unadoptable.

So time went by and after a year we realized he’s ours and nobody else will have it.

My wife comes home from the morning walk and she’s furious.

Ollie found some fresh manure on a neighbor lawn and decided to roll in it against my wife yelling to stop.
I’m not even paying attention to her angry rhetoric; I heard it a thousand times before.

She takes Ollie in the bathtub and gives him the required shampooing.

After the bath, Ollie promptly gets out through the doggie door, goes to the back yard and rolls in the dirt.

My wife loses it. She screams at the top of her lungs and threatens to take him to the shelter.

I get worried. She is really mad, but then I detect in her voice a different nuance.

Is that tone of voice you use when your kids do something bad, like making a comment on the plastic surgery your mother-in-law got.
You have to admonish them but at the same time, you think the kid is right and damn funny too.

I recognized the “bad boy syndrome” behavior.

Women love bad boys. They love the drama they cause. It is in their blood in their genetic makeup.

It is like us guys loving sports. It is in our blood. It is the thrill of the hunt embedded in our genes.

Men love to watch sports women love soap operas.

So is Ollie in any danger?

Nope, not at all. All that bad boy behavior will just make my wife loving him even more.

It is the bad boy syndrome. Women love bad boys and they could get away with murder if there wasn’t for a little clause:
You can do anything you want as long as you don’t fool around.

And Ollie doesn’t have that problem. He is loyal as a dog.

PS: That reminds me that I have to do something bad to spice up my romantic life.

Maybe I’ll tell my wife’s best friend that if she keeps gaining more weight she will get her own zip code or something equally bad like that.

I know is bad but women like the bad boys. Don’t ask me why.