The Superman Position

Our dog loves to sit on the end of the futon and watch out the front window in order to bark furiously at folks walking to the laundry room, which sits next to our apartment. When we first moved in he thought that these Launderers were coming to our place, as they would walk to the building and disappear into it next to his window. He even went into the back closet in our bedroom in search of the people that kept coming in. He could hear them in the laundry room, but could not see them. For weeks, it never occurred to him that not all doors in the building lead to our domain.

Some launderers take their dogs with them to the laundry room, which turns on his canine barkey superchargers, and as he spools up in volume, his motor control degrades to the point that he tends to bark and shake and shimmy like Elvis performing on a King Sized fire ant mound.

The other day, goaded by the presence of a Launderer and her Jack Russell, he accidentally achieved the ultimate in barkey gyrations: The Super Man Position.

The Superman Position is defined the simultaneous absence of contact between all four paws and a supporting surface for at least 3 seconds while the forepaws are stretched forwards and the rear paws extended rearwards. In real world physics, this is impossible except for in free fall for at least 60 feet, or with the use supporting cables and harness, or in the case of our dog, the following series of events:

Sensing the presence of Laundering Person accompanied by an Infuriating Canine Companion, our dog put his paws on the wooden futon arm rest to maximize his height for the purpose of intimidation. However, in the heat of the moment he made a critical mistake as he forgot that the futon armrest is slippery. He lost his balance and pitched nose forward, his chest supporting his weight on the armrest with his front paws unable to touch the ground. His tail and rear legs extended skywards, like the stern of the Titanic during it's final plunge.

A true trooper, he never completely stopped barking during this pitch forward, but his barking became sporadic and muffled as his head got buried in a box of network cables.

He started kicking his elevated rear legs in an attempt to shift his CG rearwards and get his head out of the box so that he could direct maximum volume at the Russell, and after several seconds of frantic kicking and muffled barking, his nose started to rise out of the box, a few degrees per second, like a shot up B-17G on two engines trying desperately to clear the cliffs of Dover, painfully inching it's chin turret upwards towards the horizon.

As his eyes slowly cleared the top of the box, he could again see the Russell, and his volume increased. Re-invigorated by the realization that he might just make it, he managed to pull level and balanced on his chest on the arm rest, and suspended as if by super powers, he barked his best for a good thirty seconds, his front legs jerking straight forwards and his rear legs extending straight rearward with each bark.

The Russell looked worried, and with good reason, for the Dog in the apartment next to the laundry room is so territorial that he can levitate.