By Brian Huba
Our rescue dog is a Donald Trump supporter. My wife and I adopted him in April of 2021 from a local foster. I found him on Facebook. I wasn’t in the market for a dog. I hadn’t clicked on any pet-related posts, so I have no clue what faulty algorithm put him on my feed, but there he was, “senior puggle searching for his furever family.” His name was Rudy. At least that’s what the agency called him. This probably should’ve been the first sign of his rightwing leanings.
A short time later, Rudy was transported to our home in Halfmoon, New York, a very liberal town ten miles north of Albany, for a meet-and-greet, and that’s when we found out he originally hailed from Eagle Bay, New York. Total Trump Country.
Rudy was in rough shape when he arrived. He had no top teeth and a precancerous epulis on his gum line. Dew claws dangled from his hind paws. He was overweight and under-groomed, but he had these beautiful brown eyes. People say eyes are windows to the soul, and his eyes said one thing: save me.
Our six-year-old daughter renamed Rudy Olaf, after the snowman character in Disney’s Frozen. And that’s how Rudy of Herkimer County became Olaf of Saratoga County.
Every evening, my wife and I watch MSNBC. Anytime Chris Hayes or Rachel Maddow goes on air, Olaf begins to whine and whimper, then trots out of the room. And that’s how we came to see that Olaf’s a Donald Trump supporter. He still believes Trump won the last Presidential Election. Of course we don’t judge him for this. Olaf’s a dog. Seeing his own reflection in the mirror is a mind-melting affair. And he routinely eats his own poop.
We told Olaf there isn’t a shred of evidence that proves widespread voter fraud occurred in 2020. We told him more than fifty courts have heard Trump’s claims of a rigged result, and uniformly dismissed them, including the conservative-heavy Supreme Court, which stated in its opinion, “Allegations of voter fraud are not equivalent to evidence of fraud.” We told Olaf exhaustive recounts in Battleground States, several of which were paid for by pro-Trump outfits, affirmed Joe Biden’s victory.
It took some convincing, and Olaf didn’t always like what we had to say, but he eventually agreed to make the unselfish decision and accept that Trump lost. Olaf understands it’s time to move on for the good of the whole household. Sure, he thinks the January 6th Committee is partisan and the FBI’s raid at Mar-a-Lago was bureaucratic overreach, and thinking that is his God-given right as a dog, but he recognizes Joe Biden is our duly-elected President, even if Olaf doesn’t like Biden or his “radical-leftist” agenda.
Science tells us a dog’s brain is equivalent to a two-year-old child’s. And that’s about all the mental capacity a being needs to comprehend the most-basic reality. More so, Olaf realizes his life in Halfmoon is better than his life was in Herkimer. We’ve had his epulis removed and his extra claws snipped. He eats the best food, sleeps in a warm bed, and walks every day. He is loved. So why would Olaf continue pledging allegiance to his previous owner, an owner that ignored his upkeep and health needs, then left him for dead in a shelter? All that’s in Olaf’s past. It’ll never be that way for him again.
When our political intervention ended, Olaf spent ten minutes barking at his reflection in the mirror, then went outside, took a dump in the backyard, and ate it.
“Pretty dumb to eat your own poop,” my wife said.
“There’re dumber things,” I answered.
Brian Huba teaches 12th-Grade English in Upstate New York. His Op-Eds & essays have appeared on Yahoo.com, in the Sports Column, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Democrat & Chronicle, the NY Journal News, the Syracuse-Post Standard, the NY Daily News, and the Utica Observer-Dispatch. Brian’s fiction has been published on 101 Words, in Reed Magazine, The Griffin, Down in the Dirt, Literary Juice, and The Storyteller.