All Hail the Sher-Man!

My friends have a border collie named Sherman, whom they have nick-named "Attention Deficit Pup", but who I affectionately call "Puparazzi" after the way he zips around the house, always under foot, like a motor scooter-bourne freelance news photographer. Sherman is very friendly, unless you drive a brown UPS truck (for some reason the "Ooops" Man drives him to distraction). Every morning he loves to stick his wet nose into my face as I stretch out for my morning run. He also has the standard dog ability to look absolutely forlorn and retched whenever you have a piece of food in hand - how can a well-fed pooch make himself look like a refugee in an instant? Sherman also is a tick magnet (you can practically see the little biters stampeding through the tall grass to get to him - its like some sort of bug rock concert with Sherman as Elvis), so we have to do a pat-down on him every time he comes into the house after one of his walks (it helps that my friends have watched enough T.V. police procedurals, so they know to read the ticks their Miranda rights, too). The last straw came last week when we pulled a football team's worth of ticks off of our furry buddy, and one still had the temerity to escape our careful search and jump on my friend's neck! His scream was amazing for its lack of manliness (luckily his wife wasn't there...). Anyhow, this meant that poor Sherman had to get washed down with special anti-tick shampoo and given a dousing of some sort of stuff that will make him less irresistable to the little crabbies. Well, you want to play in the grass, you gotta pay the price.