Creators Syndicate – The other week, our neighbors went away for a week and needed someone to watch Milo.

Milo is one of those small, longhaired dogs that you usually see sticking out of heiress' purses. They're tiny, yippy and frenetic. Real dogs actually wince when they see these little fur balls; they're embarrassed to be associated with them. Technically, they might not even really be dogs, as they seem to be composed of least 50 percent dryer lint.

When our neighbors left, however, they offered to pay our 13-year-old twin daughters to watch Milo. That meant going over to the neighbor's house four times a day, letting Milo out to go to the bathroom and feeding him. They'd have to stop by at 7 a.m., noon, 6 p.m. and then again at 11 p.m.

At first, I was a little skeptical, given that we have a dog of our own, a scruffy, old, smelly and stone-deaf West Highland Terrier named Harry. In the past five years, I have never seen the girls let Harry out, let him in or even feed him. Every once in a while, they squeal and ask why Harry has to chew himself like that in front of the family, but for all intents and purposes, he is invisible to them.

To be fair, Harry isn't much fun. He's doesn't play games, fetch or even move if it isn't absolutely necessary. He's now so old that every morning when I come down to the kitchen, I stand over his body — all splayed out in his dog bed — to see whether his chest is actually moving before I go get the paper. When he walks, he shuffles like a tiny, tired canine zombie. The children often complain that a live dog would be much more fun than a dead one.

With this job, though, our girls had their work cut out for them. Like so many purse dogs, Milo has an annoying tendency to pee all over the floor whenever he gets excited, which is just about every time someone comes in the door. So, our neighbors put up baby gates before they left, believing they could confine Milo to the kitchen where he could do less damage.

Milo may not be a guard dog, or even a real dog, but he turned out to be a genius at jumping over gates. Hours after the neighbors left, the girls found Milo standing in the front hall, out of the gate. Peeing.

They fed him, walked him and then put him back inside the kitchen. Then they stepped outside, ran to the windows and watched as this tiny hairball vaulted over the gate, landed in the living room and, just to add a little variety to his act, pooped. At this rate, the neighbors would come back from vacation and have to recarpet the entire house.