I swear that Sofia, the husky/coyote cross, is defying the laws of physics.
Animals often defy the laws of physics. Anyone with a cat can verify this easily.
You are sleeping, all warm and cozy, relaxed and comfortable. And in the middle of the night you start dreaming that someone has lowered a safe, or perhaps a Steinway onto your chest. You can't breathe, your mouth is opening and closing like a carp but the Steinway on your chest (or maybe it's a Buick? is there an engine running?) continues to crush your lungs, breathing is impossible and you wake up suddenly, gasping and find you still can't breathe! The engine noise is louder now, and as you gasp your way to consciousness you realize that it's not a Buick, it's your 8-lb. cat sitting on your chest, purring his brains out. Somehow, through a special cat manipulation of physics, he has changed his mass, multiplying it at least ten times. Given time, a cat could probably become his own black hole.
You push the cat off your chest, and breathe for ten minutes to recover your brain cells. Then, exhausted, you drop back to sleep.
Not to be discouraged, the cat stealthily returns, this time treading on you with tiny little feet that are so heavy that they threaten to go straight through your body, poking holes in you as if you were the Pillsbury Dough Boy. This, of course, wakes you up and you happily throw the cat across the room, and go back to sleep.
There is a reason there is a song entitled, "The Cat Came Back." If you recall, the cat came back even after a nuclear holocaust. Your cat is no different. Being tossed across the room isn't going to hurt his feelings in the least.
You roll over in your sleep and find your bed has suddenly become shorter. You can't stretch out your legs all the way. There is a boulder on the bed right by your feet, apparently.
At this point most people just give up and sleep curled into the fetal position.
Many years ago I was at a party on the second floor of a house. A woman there had brought her dog, and this dog was used to jumping out the window to get into his back yard. After we had been yakking it up and listening to records (I told you it was a long time ago, CDs hadn't been invented) the dog decided, on his own, that it was time to go outside. He turned, leapt on the the couch and jumped through a closed window!
The window broke, and then the most amazing things happened in just a split second of time. It was one of those accidental events where time seemed to slow down. The dog, with a surprised look on his face, looked down, and saw that he was rather far from the ground! Then, in mid-air changed his trajectory with nothing to push on in order to change it, and jumped back into the house!
It's impossible. You can't jump in the air going one direction, and suddenly change direction with nothing but air all around you. You can't do that. But I saw this dog do just that.
We all sat there with our mouths open. Everyone knew right away that we'd just seen a dog do something impossible. He'd broken the window, he'd had enough velocity to do that, he was definitely headed out and down, and yet somehow he reversed his direction.
A more common dog impossibility is my Sofia dog, who is a coyote/husky cross. She's a skinny little thing, and yet she has whole HERDS of dogs hidden under that thin coat. She has covered my car, my house, my clothes, my work space, absolutely everything, maybe the planet if I let her, with dog hair.
She sheds once a year, and doesn't shed during the cold weather. The thing is, she's a 45 lb. dog that is somehow carrying secret loads of fur that could fill the biggest dump truck on earth. I could brush her for a week and besides having a sore arm and having to buy more brushes, I still would be getting a St. Bernard off of her every fifteen minutes.
You'd think she was your typical sled dog, husky, Samoyed, Mackenzie River dog or something. But she's not! She's just a really skinny little coyote dog! She doesn't have huge clumps of fur hanging off her. Just small little tufts here and there. You pet her and you can feel her ribs. You can SEE her ribs, for heaven sakes.
Sofia's underfur is like the stream of scarves that magician's pull out of their sleeves, hats, coats, noses, etc. Only her stream of fur appears to be endless. It collects in all the corners, against every wall, and every hard surface in rolls. I'm going to get me some knitting needles and knit me a poodle. Several poodles. Maybe an Irish Wolfhound.
