The Second Saga of Foo: Part II

For maximum suspense, read Part I first!

The following Sunday we stopped by the bachelor pad to check it out. Gabe and Cliff had been moving in for three or four days, Foo Dog was settled in, and the place looked great! I was ready to move in myself! Well, almost. Foo’s beard was very dark because he’d been digging in his new yard. He was playing with doggie toys, which was surprising -- normally Foo Dog spends his entire day impersonating a rug, and only comes to life briefly. Anyway, while taking pictures of the house, they captured me with Foo:

A few days later Gabe stopped by our house with Foo Dog. Foo romped about in the house a bit, then Gabe let him out in the backyard. When Foo came back in, it was apparent that he had learned very bad habits from Gabe and had been digging in our yard. I tried to clean his dirty beard with a wet washcloth. We chatted, then A. and Jonathan arrived. After visiting a bit, A. said, “Hey, what is this dog out here on the porch?” I looked around, and Foo was inside. I looked out on the porch and there was another Shih Tzu. It looked very much like Foo—the original Foo, without a dirty beard. I was stunned. What were the chances that there was another Shih Tzu in the neighborhood that looked just like Foo Dog? And that he would end up on my front porch? It gradually dawned on me that A. must have set this up.

As I slowly processed this information, my next thought was that John would never believe that I wasn’t behind it. There was nothing I could ever do to convince him. The first words out of my mouth (and please realize that I said this to my daughter) were, “You’ve ruined my marriage!” I was distraught. I looked around the room in a daze, and then thought I noticed the tiniest of smiles on John’s face. Everyone was looking at me, watching me realize, ever so slowly, that I had been had.

It was the perfect Double Con. Little by little I pieced it all together: Foo Dog had never dug in his new yard; Faux Foo had been the dog I had played with and held in my lap on Sunday. Faux Foo had come in with Gabe this evening, and I had tried to clean his darker beard to no avail because that was his natural color. Jonathan had sneaked into the backyard to retrieve the real Foo, and planted him on our front porch. I was a total dupe.

Poor Joyce at the groomers had been a reluctant conspirator in an involved family scam of hushed phone calls, secret code-talk, sudden lies, switched collars, and shuttled dogs between houses, with lots of suppressed giggling. She probably was worried, confused, and convinced that the entire family was crazy.

My husband is the nicest guy in the world. He really hadn't wanted the dog, even after learning of my feeble plot from A. But as soon as she said the words “double con,” his immediate and irrevocable reaction was, “YES! I must have that dog!”

Faux Foo is fitting into our family life beautifully. Don’t you think he looks a lot like the real Foo?

Left: Foo Dog, 9/9/07 Right: Faux Foo, 9/2/07

Different dogs, same oblivious human.