Snoot the Dog vs. Mohammed Ali the Kitten

It's been a while since I wrote about my favorite dog on the planet, so I thought I'd take a few minutes and catch everyone up on Snoot's wiley adventures.

I tell you I can't really remember what life was like before I got him back around Christmas. My husband says he can though. "Hell, I used to could walk through my own house without being followed and jumped on." A minor inconvenience if you ask me for having such a lovable clown in the house.

My son, who is a large, strappin' boy, has become designated dog walker during the summer break. Snoot, who used to wake me up at 4:30 to take him out, now only tries once to get me up and, if I refuse, he hi-tails it back to Alex's room, noses him and woofs at him til he wakes up and takes him out. He has also gotten into the habit of hurrying Alex up when he thinks he isn't moving fast enough. He is especially vocal when Alex is dilly-dallying on the phone. I'll tell Alex to take the dog out, at which point Snoot will go to Alex's room and park himself outside the door. When Alex keeps talking to his friend Snoot will whine a little bit, then woof and eventually nose Alex as if to say, "Come on man I really gotta go and mom said you had to take me out."

Up until this morning Snoot has only concerned himself with chasing the big cats and not the little kittens that are everywhere. When he goes out on his leash there are baby kittens covering the back steps and while he will stop, sniff and sometimes lick them, he has never shown any agression towards them. He has never really shown any agression towards the big cats either. They like to run from him and he revels in chasing them. Simple as that. He has had many opportunities to eat them up or hurt then but hasn't.

Then, this morning I had my son take him out and put him in his outside pen. Alex didn't tie the gate properly and so Snoot got out and commenced to bounding around the yard. When this happens chasing him is utterly pointless, because he moves like greased lightning. What I do is walk outside and pretend I am not interested in the least that he is out of his fence. The more I ignore him the closer he will come to me. While I was feeding the chickens I heard a huge commotion and my husband hollered, "Hey honey look at this kitten trying to beat up the dog!"



I looked around and there stood the kitty pictured above, who weighs less than a pound, in a very serious conflict with the dog, who weighs every bit of 110 pounds.

Snoot was super-excited, which can be dangerous in a Shepherd, and he was repeatedly trying to box the little kitten with his nose. Darting at him and making strange noises. Tail wagging. Paws tappin'. I hollered at him to stop and started to move over to break up the altercation before it escalated.

That probably wasn't necessary, because the tiny little kitten you can hold in the palm of your hand was all bowed up, hair standing on end, hissing, spitting and, I kid you not, actually jumping up off the ground trying to swat Snoot's nose. It was hilarilous to see this little feller, who the dog could have swallowed whole had he chose to, standing his ground and actually trying to box the dogs nose. It reminded me of the baby chicken hawk vs. Foghorn Leghorn on the old Bug's Bunny cartoons. Remember those?


I was laughing so hard I almost lost my balance and fell.

I managed to get close enough to make Snoot take off (he wasn't ready to be caught yet) and the little kitty just stood there as if to say, "Hey, I was holding my own, what'd you have ta run him off for...I wasn't finished giving him the ol' one...two."

I love animals. They make life more fun.