I Hate Florida

The extremely trying lifetimes of a little white dog

In hindsight, The Universe was not one to take either birth control advice or birth control pills from. He gender-identifies as a boy Universe, and I now completely understand that if you want birth control advice from the top you need to get it from a Girl Universe.

Damn.

We didn't find out that Lucille was pregnant until we got back to Bethlehem, and at that Jesus and his parents only knew much later than I did, because I sneak around a lot, and I was keeping a very sharp eye on Lucille, yes, I was.

The difficulty was that Lucille was extraordinarily elusive. She slipped in and out of hell at a moment’s notice because she had a passkey for one of the side gates. It goes without saying that I didn't have anywhere near that level of access to hell. In fact, I was doggie-non-grata in hell, Satan having decided that I wasn't really on his side in most situations. He had figured out that I was fulfilling an assignment as Jesus's protector, and while he didn't really have anything personal against Jesus, business was business, and he had to do everything he could to undermine him. I was a potential leak, and I had to be kept at pitchfork length. Demons were instructed to pick me up, put me in a sack, and throw me in the river if they saw me. So you can imagine my visits to hell, when I made them, were entirely circumspect.

And how, you may ask me, did I get in and out of hell in the first place? I suppose you think that I was a bad dog, because that will do it, right? Silly you. Bad dogs are a dime a dozen. Heaven is filled with them. Even REALLY bad dogs are not de facto disqualified from heavenly residence. No, a dog has to be unspeakably evil in order to get into hell, and several orders above routinely unspeakable if they are to be granted regular in-and-out access as bona fide hellhounds. You see hellhounds all the time in movies, especially movies with actors like Nicholas Cage in them. But that’s BS; hellhounds are actually rare beasts indeed and as you might imagine it is extraordinarily difficult for a Shih Tzu to pass as a hellhound though some few have tried. No, that won’t fly; and so I had to pass as an ordinary Shih Tzu when skulking around hell keeping an eye on Lucille.