I’m dogsitting Houston. He has been here since Thursday night, or more precisely, 1am Friday morning. You might remember that Houston belongs to Samuel, whom I had a falling out with? Yes, that Houston.

Since the beginning of this year, Samuel has been planning on a 2-week vacation in Dominica, not to be confused with Dominican Republic, to visit his father. Last week, he was talking about his vacation and mentioned his sister was also coming. Because I had assumed his sister had been taking care of Houston when he went away for business trips – the exact business trips I can’t go because he refused to take care of my dogs and hence he has to go in my stead, I asked, and who’s taking care of Houston? He answered, oh, yeah. Can you take care of him? If you were me, wouldn’t YOU drop your jaws?

The first time Samuel made the business trip instead of me was last year a few weeks after one of the biggest arguments between Samuel and me. Because he had been taking care of my dogs every time I had been on a trip, and also I thought, most stupidly of course, that Samuel and I had some unwritten contract that we would take care of each other’s pets, I had assumed he would be pet-sitting for me without even talking about it when I was scheduled to go. A week or so before the business trip, when we were talking, he mentioned he had to do something for his father on precisely those days during my trip. I didn’t like the way he said it, and upon probing further, a very unpleasant exchange ensued, to put it mildly. Basically, he had been planning this to screw me over at the last minute if you ask me. Me, having to go and nobody to take care of my kids. Well, his plan backfired of course, because I went straight to my boss and told him that I couldn’t go to any more business trips because Samuel would not take care of my dogs and owing to my dogs’ special needs, I couldn’t hire or trust anybody to take care of them either. My boss who already knew all the special needs my dogs have, simply said, OK, I understand, and told Samuel he had to go from now on.

So you see, I don’t think anybody would expect me to agree to dog-sit Houston after that, and my answer to him was a loud and clear no accompanied by I can’t believe you are even asking and You can’t possibly be expecting me to say yes, and etc ad nauseam. Samuel meekly said OK and that was the end of it.

Come Wednesday, I found out Samuel was planning to leave Houston with a family of his father’s friend. Now I was shocked. I would never EVER leave my pets with somebody who I don’t really know, especially a dog like Houston, who, if ever got loose, you would never be able to get him back unless you are Samuel. And if caught by, say, an animal control officer, Houston would be sentenced to death so fast because he would fight strangers tooth and nail, who try to handle him without Samuel standing by. Alarmed, I started talking about all the bad things that could happen to Houston. For TWO DAYS. So at the end of Thursday, I made Samuel worried enough for him to consider canceling his trip forfeiting his plane ticket for a 6am flight on Friday. My job was done.

I was pure evil in views of some. I was most righteous in view of others. But it turned out that the family who were supposed to take care of Houston told him they couldn’t dog-sit Houston. At the last minute! Serves him right, eh?

So at the end of Thursday, I agreed to take care of Houston. As much as I don’t like to help out Samuel in this regard, I really did feel bad he would have to forfeit his plane ticket and cancel the vacation he’d been planning the entire fucking year. Yeah, I can be nice sometimes even though it totally goes against my principle.