I’ve blogged relentlessly about the very special stupid that is my dog, but I keep getting shocked by how grave a situation her lack of intelligence really is. This is an animal that not only barks every time you come in the house, but every time you come in the room. Like you weren’t just in the room and stepped out to get a sammich, then came back with said sammich. She has literally no idea who you are once you’ve been gone for four minutes. And by you, I actually mean me.

This dog has several hobbies, like crapping in the floor, knocking over garbage cans to get to the used Q-tips in the bottom, and…drum roll…eating our panties. Yes, this deranged whore-hound eats the crotch out of every pair of underwear she can get her stupid little teeth on. She doesn’t discriminate, either, going for male or female panties and those belonging to household members both young and old. One time, she was having such a county-fair-picnic with a pair of our youngest child’s Little Mermaid panties that she actually got her head through the leg hole and nearly cut off her own oxygen supply on the nirvana that is left over little girl farts. I wish she had gone ahead and strangled herself with them.

Oh, stop it. I’m not cruel. And what the hell, call PETA, I’ll look up their phone number for you. Even those guys wouldn’t put up with an animal who obviously was the dog equivalent of a crack baby for more than five minutes. This dog has fetal alcohol syndrome from its mother drinking puddles of antifreeze during her pregnancy. Maybe my dog’s the victim of Shaken Puppy Syndrome at the hands of a deranged British nanny. Maybe she’s just really, really genetically and irreversibly dumb.

Despite all the household poo and strewn-about garbage and the crotchless panties my family now accidentally wears, my biggest issue with this dog is the raging hyperactivity. She makes a fast-talking auctioneer look nearly comatose. She runs through the house screaming (well, barking, but it’s as annoying as if she were screaming), her two inch legs carrying her with surprising speed for a midget. She actually does these NASCAR-style laps of every room in the house, my office included, until finally I can’t stand it and I scream to no one in particular, “It would be awesome if this dog wasn’t doing that!”

So why do we keep her? Why, you ask, don’t I just drive her to the next county and drop her off on someone’s porch? Because I’ve figured it out: this dog is my canine Purgatory. I’m working off every animal-related sin ever committed, and I don’t just mean ones I may have accidentally done, like the opossums I may have inadvertently run over in the dark. I’m working off every sin-against-animals ever committed by anyone on the planet. Thanks a lot, Japanese whalers. My dog eats another pair of underwear for every humpback whale that gets boiled down for lamp oil, or whatever it is you do with a dead 10,000-pound mammal. And it’s a shame, too, those whales are supposed to be pretty smart.