This year my family decided it would be fun to get a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. While I love puppies, I much prefer big dogs. I find little dogs easy to trample on and obnoxious. We got him in the summer when he was only three-months-old and enjoyed constant yelping and howling night performances during the first couple months. Now he is allowed to stay around the house, which means we have to clean up accidents and break up fights between him and the cat.

My mom and sister ended up naming him Darcy. Needless to say I am not extremely fond of the name, but I didn’t have a choice in the matter after I vetoed Poirot. Personally, naming a dog after a kooky detective in an otherwise boring British mystery series is not my ideal.

As cute as Darcy may be, I often find myself wishing he could take on the habits of our cat and simply sleep all day. Instead, he prefers to roam around our house searching for anything that can get our attention. Usually this includes dirty underwear or whatever remaining flavors he can find from underneath our dishwasher.

Today, oddly enough, he was acting quite sedate. He lay on the bed while I did my math homework for almost an hour. Of course, the minute I got my laptop out, he was back to his old habits. For some reason, my computer is the ultimate entertainment device for Darcy. He will stand there for hours, staring at the screen, trying to bite the mouse and chase the words I’m typing.

Sometimes he goes a little over the top and starts jumping onto my laptop. He pushes obscure buttons, causing me to freak out. During finals week, I was typing up my insanely ridiculous AP English timeline, of which I already typed 10 pages, when Darcy ran over my keyboard. I didn’t think much of it until I found that my mouse wasn’t working right and when I tried to save my document it went into recovery mode and I lost four pages.

Luckily he didn’t cause too much pain tonight. His minor catastrophe was probably partly my fault because I got him riled up by getting out my almonds. I was eating my almonds, holding a pillow between my laptop and him so he couldn’t lick my screen, and being preoccupied with writing, I failed to notice him put his head inside my box of almonds. He managed to grab about five or six, most of which I got back from him. However, he got away with one and was chewing it for a while. I didn’t think it was an issue; one almond is not going to kill him. So I went back to working, with him staring at my screen again, when he suddenly throws it up all over my laptop! (By the way, this is the laptop which is supposed to last me through college.) Now there will forever be almond throw up in between the cracks of my keys.

After putting Darcy in the kennel for awhile, I took him out again and found him playing with our cat. This is a pretty normal routine and is actually quite entertaining to watch when there’s nothing on TV. Amazingly, the fights are pretty even between the two. Both are about the same size, as Darcy is a small dog and Tommy, being a Ragdoll, is pretty big. Darcy is usually the one who starts the attacks, which lately he is happy with chewing on Tommy’s ear and seeing what Tommy’s reaction will be. So far, we haven’t found any scars, but he does have a couple of tiny holes in his ear from our last dog, who was a golden retriever. Darcy may be a small dog, but he has teeth. We have already seen him chew and swallow an entire dead bird and a lizard he found on the street.

Anyway, Tommy doesn’t really like to move a lot (since he’s so fat) so he usually just paws at Darcy, which I don’t see as a real weapon since he was declawed early in his life. You would think this just feels like a tap on the shoulder, his facial expression makes it look like he is really doing some damage. It’s most amusing when they cling to each other and go rolling around our living room. I usually have to watch out for my laptop in these cases because they are unaware of anything around them. Both have run across my keyboard successive times, and have even threatened their own well-being in the process.

Last week, Darcy was chasing Tommy, and Tommy ran into the fireplace by accident, coming out looking pretty dirty. The rest of the night he lay on our chair, refusing to play anymore. Darcy has risked some limbs as well. He tries to be as agile as Tommy, but unfortunately he simply cannot jump very well.

The other day I found him trying to jump from my mom’s bed, across the backboard of a chair, and onto the seat of the chair. In any case, he doesn’t have the brains to see what most people, even Tommy, would notice, that this is almost an impossible task. It was pretty pitiful to watch. He jumped, barely made it to the top of the backboard, and after a few clawing motions fell to the ground. My sister and I were very worried because he made a big thump when he reached the ground, but about a minute later he was attacking Tommy once again.

I hope I haven’t come across as an animal hater who finds amusement in my pets’ catastrophes. I have to say, if you do choose to get a small dog, a cavalier is a good choice since they are very easy to train. Darcy actually jolts back when he hears the word “uh oh” now, which is used whenever he does something bad. They are also very lovable and obsessed with sitting in laps. After all, that’s what they were bred to do: sit in your lap and “hunt” for carcasses!