Apropos of nothing except that this story totally cracks me up every time I think of it

My brother Sam and his girlfriend Camille live in New York City in a 47th floor apartment in Tribeca.* They have two dogs, both pugs.  Number One Pug is a boy named Phillip, who is 11.  Philip is fat and hilarious and adorable.  He's lazy as shit and would eat 24/7 if given the chance, and he's a big sweetie and we love him.

Sam set up a Facebook page for him, with a bio that says he went to SUNY-New Paltz and status updates that say things like, "Tonight for dinner I had ... wait for it ... dog food.  Jesus Christ.  I feel like I'm in a Kafka novel."  Fucking priceless.

Anyway, Phillip was an only dog for awhile.  And around the time that Sam and Camille decided to move in together, they got Daisy, also a pug (or, more accurately, Camille got Daisy, which means Sam got Daisy).  I believe Daisy is a rescue dog.  Daisy is slightly older than Phillip, and other than the fact that they're both pugs, they are easily distinguishable from each other to anyone paying attention.

Phillip and Daisy.  To quote Sam, "they're not exactly Great Danes, but they'll do the trick."

So they're looking for a place to live and they find this place in Tribeca. And I think when they submitted their application, they said they only had one dog -- I'm not sure if they hadn't gotten Daisy yet, but I suspect that they had but fudged a bit to increase their odds of having the application approved.  Apparently, it's a very nice building with a doorman and standards that are enforced by a condo board or management association or whatever.

(Incidentally, they also lied about Phillip's weight and then were incensed when his vet, who has been trying to get Phillip on a diet for years, refused to sign a certification that Phillip weighed only 20 pounds.  Which, if you've ever seen Phillip, is a big "no duh.")

So they move in and the place is great and all is well.  Except for the fact that they claimed to have only one dog but actually have twice that.  I guess they did things like hid or sprinted down the street when they saw someone from the management association approaching them.

They had been in the new apartment a couple of weeks when we went to the beach in New Hampshire, and they joined us there for a couple of days.  They had gotten a message from one of the management people:  "Uhhh, Mistuh [Wendy's Brother], we need to work out the situation with the dooh-ug."  In my head, the person leaving the message was either Selma or Patty Bouvier, with a heavy, heavy New Yawk accent.

Sam's plan was to appeal to her sense of decency by explaining that Daisy was a rescue dog and that if he didn't take her in, she would be put down and DO YOU WANT TO BE A PARTY TO DOG MURDER???

Turns out Patty/Selma's sensibilities were not so delicate, because she didn't give a shit.  "Don't you try to make me feel guilty, Mistuh [Wendy's Brother].  You were only supposed to have one dog and you've got two and it's not my problem."

Now, to me this whole scenario is all the more awesome because of Sam's extraordinary ability to be seized with self-righteousness when he is clearly and unquestionably in the wrong (remember when he made up a Wikipedia entry and then was all indignant when it was removed not because it wasn't true, but because it wasn't noteworthy enough?).**  And I say this as someone who absolutely adores him.  But it's true.  So the image of this grumpy woman peering out at him over her cat-eye glasses while the world's longest piece of ash threatens to fall off the cigarette dangling from her lips, as she tells him to take his old pathetic dying dog and shove it, just makes me giggle.

But now the condo board/management association had him by the short hairs.  What to do?  What would become of poor Daisy?

The solution was surprisingly simple.

I think it might have been the super (who isn't on the management association) who suggested that they walk the dogs separately and always take one out the front entrance and the other out the back entrance.  So that the doormen would only ever see one dog at a time, and always the same dog, and thus somehow be duped into thinking they only had one.

And amazingly, it worked.  Even though Phillip is a spry (if chubby) dapper young gentleman, and Daisy could not be mistaken for anything but his decrepit old aunt.

Only in New York.  I love it.

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*Originally this post stated that they lived on the Upper West Side and that Phillip was 5 or 6 years old. Those errors have been corrected. Apparently Phillip looks young for his age.

**This post was written when Sam was married to Voldemort a/k/a She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. He isn't any more. Obvs.