Sloane called me the next day and told me Mike had said no to the horse, and she was starting to think it wasn't such a smart idea either.

"What are you talking about, Sloane? This horse is going to improve your quality of life! Charley will be busy every day riding him like a little cowgirl. You won't have to worry about her pulling Russell's ear off or trying to shove dinner rolls in his ass crack."

"I can't do it, Chelsea. I'm sorry. It just doesn't make any sense."

I didn't talk to Sloane for a few days, and for weeks afterward, every time I saw a horse or a cat, or a horse that looked like a cat, I was an emotional wreck.

I looked at Chunk, who was staring at the leftover hamburger meat in the Ziploc bag in my hand. "He's got an erection," I told Ted.

"Gross."

"Don't shame him! He has to know this is an open household where you can express yourself."

"Can you please tell me whose dog this is Chelsea?" he said, covering his eyes.

"I'm telling you, he's ours. He is part of our family now. It could be worse. What if I decided I wanted a baby? Then you'd really be fucked."

It took Ted a little while, but he finally realized Chunk was no joke and went over to pet him. "Well, what's his name?"

"Red Rocket," I said, staring straight at the dog's boner.

"Chelsea, what is his real name, please?"

"Chunk."

"I thought I was Chunk?" Ted asked. "That's going to confuse both of us. How am I going to know which one of us you're talking to?"

"From now on, Ted," I said, taking a seat at the kitchen table, "I will always be talking to the dog."

"That's great, Chelsea. Has he eaten?" he asked, eyeing the dog.

"Yes, I just made him some hamburger meat and steamed clams. He'll be fine until tomorrow. Eva is picking up some real dog food tomorrow."

"No, Chelsea! You cannot feed a dog clams! In the shell?"

"I can't?"

"Dogs can't eat human food, I'll go down to Ralphs and get him something," Ted volunteered. "I have a special recipe I do for dogs."

"Oh, really? I would like to hear that recipe."

"I do half dry food… and half Alpo," he said, waving his hands around like one of the guys on the tarmac with the orange sticks when your plane lands. I looked at him, walked into my bedroom, and shut the door. Then I opened it, let Chunk (the dog) in, and shut it again. I had no idea where or how to start explaining to Chunk what we were dealing with. How do you explain to a child that his father will try to feed him Alpo? I didn't even know Alpo was still in business, and I certainly didn't know Ted was on their board of directors.

As if this weren't bad enough, the next morning Ted schooled me in dog training. I was in the shower, and Chunk was standing outside, chivalrously looking away while I put my body through a rinse cycle. Ted walked in, said good morning to the dog, then put his hand above Chunk's head and pushed it through the air. He instructed Chunk to "Sit!"-which Chunk did on command. "Chelsea, this is how you to tell a dog to sit," he announced.

I hadn't even finished lathering my shampoo into my hair when I kicked open the shower door. "Oh, really, Dog Whisperer? Is that how you do it?"

"You know what, Chelsea? How am I supposed to know if you know dog tricks?" he said, throwing up his hands in hopelessness.

"Are you being serious right now, Ted? I really must know."

"Chelsea, you don't even like dogs."

"Telling a dog how to sit is not only not a trick, it's probably the single most universal thing in the world, aside from army salutes and brownies." I wished my new dog didn't have to be subjected to this kind of humiliation, but this was his life now, and he needed to know what we were up against. We would be in this together, and I felt relieved to have an ally. Someone who understood me, loved me, and didn't know how to disagree with me.

When I told my sister Sidney about the new addition to my family, she said, "This sounds a little overwhelming for someone with your limited skill set, Chelsea. You've already killed three fish. Have you thought about putting Ted down?"

"I told you Ted said those fish were starter fish who were sacrificing their lives to stabilize our aquarium and then we'd get pretty fish. Why do you keep bringing that up?"

After word spread that I'd gotten a dog, I received some of the most annoying e-mails I've ever encountered. Friends wanting to know if I wanted to arrange doggy play dates, lists of dog parks in my area, advice on what food to feed him, how to socialize him-essentially a collection of people I decided to end friendships with. The only doggy activity I was prepared to do was doggy style, and I'd be lying if I said that hadn't lost its appeal sometime around my sweet sixteen. I always thought people were annoying with their baby advice, but this seemed like it might be worse. I had spent my entire life with one dog or another, and aside from being emotionally unstable, each family dog we had seemed like a pretty cut-and-dried case. They started out as puppies, grew up, and then died, in no specific order.

The one person I allow to take Chunk for overnight visits is my friend Michael. He is a gay man with his own dog and is obsessed with Chunk and insists on calling him "Chunkity Chunk." He has Chunk every Saturday for an overnight slumber party and then reports back to me on Sunday how he and Chunk talked for hours and that dogs are really the only people who understand him.

"I have a special language that dogs understand," he'll tell me in his deep Texan twang. "He'll lie on top of me, and I'll give him a forty-five-minute deep-tissue massage, and he loooooooves it. Then I'll turn on your TV show and watch it, and Chunk will sit down right in front of the TV and stare straight at you. He loves the show! He is such a special dog, Chelsea. I just have such a love for him. He is so funny!"

It's pointless trying to tell Michael that dogs aren't funny, simply because they are dogs and they are incapable of telling jokes or getting them, for that matter. It's pointless to tell Michael much of anything because he is in a world all his own and he has the attention span of an espresso maker. He also has a pretty unhealthy, though seemingly innocuous, relationship with his own dog.

I wanted to make sure there was nothing going on with Chunk that I would be alarmed by. "You're not putting your finger in my dog's asshole, right?" I asked him one afternoon on the phone. I didn't really believe that he was, but I had just finished Mia Farrow's autobiography and I didn't want to be one of those mothers who let their child hang out with a Woody Allen type who was doing inappropriate things to their flesh and blood.

"Chelsea Handler, I would never, ever put my finger in any dog's asshole. I wouldn't hurt any animal on this earth for all the money in the world. I love dogs, and I love Chunk, and I think you know that I would never hurt a fly."

"That's not the point, Michael. You can never fit your finger into a fly's asshole."

"Chelsea, please don't do this."

"Okay, sorry. As a mother, I just had to ask."

"I understand," Michael told me. "I do think Chunk is gay, though. And also I want to be put in your will just in case you die, so that I get Chunk. Ted won't care, right?"

Michael still takes Chunk every weekend, and I know he doesn't stick anything in his asshole, because Chunk gets so excited every time Michael shows up to take him. And I know Chunk is straight because he tested negative for the gay virus.

Chunk still follows me around all the time, but he has chilled out a little bit, mostly because he saw the toll it was taking on me when Ted did the same thing. Once in a while, Ted and I will forget to put food away and then come home to find the remains of a wheel of Brie spread across our duvet and Chunk passed out next to the bed. It happens only every so often, but when it does, our entire condo smells like a foot and I'm convinced that my mother has reincarnated herself as Chunk. Spreading Brie over my bedspread and coming back to life as a dog is totally something my mother would do.