Monday, March 26, 2007

Speaking the word of dog

A new reality has descended upon the animal kingdom, which is that it has all gone canine. At least that's how Henry would have it.

See, "dog" was one of his earliest words. And he can point out a dog like nobody's business. If we drive past some man out walking his best friend, you can count on excited shouts of "dog!" from the backseat. If we arrive home only to hear Elliott barking his fool head off from inside, Henry's quick to put a name to the racket's source.

But dog is not limited to just actual dogs. When we look at pictures of animals, they're all dogs. The entire cast of the Farmer Says See And Say is dog, be they bird, amphibian, small woodland animal, or mud dweller. When we read Dr. Seuss, every fuzzy character is a dog. Reading The Foot Book goes something like this:

Holmes: His feet, her feet. Fuzzy fur feet

Henry: (pointing to large fuzzy beast thing) Dog.

Holmes: Small feet, big feet, here come pig feet.

Henry: (pointing to pig) Dog.

Holmes: That's a pig.

Henry (emphatically) Dog.

Holmes: Pig.

Henry: (slower, patiently, as if talking to a child) Dog.

And that's the thing that cracks me up, the little guy is so very patient with me when explaining what these things are (dogs, of course). One day he'll know the names of all these things and more, and even plenty of stuff his old man never quite got around to learning about. But right now, it's all dog, it's all good, and it's hilarious.

7 comments:

Whit said...

Dogs are cooler than most of those other animals anyway. It's like a compliment.

Jason said...

Maybe he's referring to you when he says dog.

"small feet, big feet,here come pig feet."

"word up, dog."

Be glad he doesn't call you 'boy-eee'

Julie said...

Stella isn't quite as advanced as Henry, but she does currently refer to our cat as a dog too. She says dog a lot, although it's "doa", kind of rather than dog. It's really cute when she says it and then I correct her and say "dog" and she tries to imitate me back and forth over and over, her never really getting that g, but trying!

Tara said...

I remember Brandon deciding that Jeff was a puppy. For some reason I thought it was hysterical and poor Uncle Jeff got his feelings hurt. I figured it was step up. Brandon used to always call him Puter, because Jeff would always hide and play on the computer rather than deal with a crazy little kid. I mean puppies are better than puters right?

Marsha said...

Ha! Jackson is the same way. There are kitties, which are cats, and puppies which are everything else in the animal kingdom. It cracks me up when we are driving to work and he points at the cows, sheep and/or goats in the fields and excitedly declares them all puppies!

Karl said...

Hysterical. Gotta love the children. It's their world. We just live in it.

Kristi Harrison said...

I second Jason. He's talking to you. You better spend some quality time with your little homey.