...for a pretty face. Even if [sigh] it is on a terrier.
And with all pretty faces, there's a bit of madness, isn't there?
Meet Rex. He's a bit of a Shia LeBeouf, isn't he?
When I was in my twenties, I had a friend who's Jack Russell terriers (she had 2) ganged up on a puppy she introduced and killed the poor thing. Tore it to shreds, practically. We were all shocked. Until this pair came into our lives, all we knew about the breed was that it was that cute pooch on Frazier. For a time the friend was the bomb - not only was she rich and thin - she had the dog of the moment. In stereo. But then...the incident.
Needless to say the collective gasp was immediately followed the uninanimously newfound interest in the Visla. Previously dog-only persons were considering cats.
I hadn't thought much about the breed, really, until I moved to New York where my good friend, Georgina, mothers a pair of Jacks...well, Jills really, Maggie and Indie. I adore Indie - she's a bloodhound in a terrier's body if you ask me. She's an independent, sleepy sort who is content to snooze and look up every now and then. Maggie, on the other hand, as her mother put it in her most proper Aussie accent, is "the sort a sheep farmer puts down, isn't she?" Horrible. Maggie attacks anything that moves, me included. Even though she lives in a swanky pad in Chelsea, I'm always hesitatant to dog sit the girls when Georgi goes away which is often.
This bears repeating. I am a single male who thinks twice about dog sitting 25 pounds of pooch who live in a fab crib in the middle of Chelsea because of Maggie, the crazed Jack Russell.
Rex is cute though. I'm gonna arrange with the shelter for an outing to see just how crazy his pretty is. I'm wearing boots to be safe.
...and the Neapolitan Mastiff below that I dragged off the Dogtime.com "Categories" menu on the left, (see "Ages and Stages") looks to me like Ellen Burstyn.
I'm thinkin' the film "Resurrection."
I don't know that dogs look like their owners right off the bat - I think that owners evolve to match their dogs. Dalmatians, for example, are born with spots; women don't come into the world with matching print coats. But some pooches really do look like real people and, if you ask me, likely have personalities to match their doppelgangers. So it is with caution that I am approaching this German Shepherd I cruised the other day.
He looks waaayyy to much like an ex-boyfriend. Cute, lanky, long-torsoed and sharp-profiled. But the walls! It does not surprise me that I met this dog from behind a fence - people and pooches are always on opposite sides of them.
Lord, I could tell you stories.
...in Brooklyn. It was one of those rendezvous that was both regrettably inevitable and inevitably regrettable. Like I said, it was the Brooklyn you get to on one of those trains that no one really ever wants to take - ghost trains, urban myth trains, trains that go to those parts of Brooklyn. They only come into Manhattan far enough to let their fleeing masses disembark into the light of downtown and then slither back into...Brooklyn.
There was so much pressure to hook up, you know. Even though we'd actually met a few months before in Chelsea, I never got his name. The whole scene was awkward. He's a friend of a friend's boyfriend, blah, blah, blah. So the moment comes and I think that if I cradle him to my chest and scratch the back of his head we'd doze off into shameless man-to-mutt slumber. (It's worked before.) Instead, he was playful and nippy and stuck his unwanted tongue in my face over and over again.
Finally, after a couple of hours of this I look at him, hold him by the neck and bark, "Buddy, GO TO BED!". He curls up sadly, his backside to me and (the truth) farts. Ewwwwwkanuba.
See, if puggle and I had chemistry, none of this would have been a problem. But we didn't. And so that's how it is with the Chihuahua, Lucky. We have no chemistry.
Call me a snob, but seriously - I can't do shorties, I don't care how close parts of them come to the ground...especially ones with such mindlessly tail-waggin' kissy-kissy behavior. Call me canine-conservative, but I like a brute with palpable reserve, one who barks when he really means it and looks hot when I'm in camos. Lucky is undeniably athletic, trim, has great hair, an energetic outdoorsey type with the tinest of carbon footprints. And yes, he is a much-desired Latino twink (not that that matters to me, really), but he's just not my type.
It would have never worked. And I am certain I will walk down the street one day in the future to see him in the arms of a real catch, or a real catch's sister, toted in some bangin' Louis Vuitton. That's traditionally been just my lucky.
...and we head to the marina. Cliche I know, but its just down the street. I figure we could go for a walk, he'd show me his impressive house-trained skills, and then its hasta-la-vista. But no....
...toying with the idea of settling down.
They say that you meet the one when you stop looking. Intellectually, I know this to be true; in my own life the best ones have come my way by accident and the worst ones, by manipulating the situation. I’ve lived long enough and have plenty of experience in the world to know to be cool, to keep my eyes on the road, away from the puppies in the window and the breeder ads where actively-seeking sorts like myself know to go. In my mind, I approach it as though I were looking for a human mate. If it were possible, I’d post a personal for that one-and-only to sniff at, wherever they sniff at, and it would read like this:
Dog-single human male seeks hairy Teutonic sort with dark, masculine features. Must be appropriately aggressive but sensitive, intelligent and kind. Into cuddling, rugby, public displays of affection, weekends on the couch, and group play.
My last dog relationship ended badly, and he lives in another state. In fact, the last time I saw him he barely recognized me and growled. We were best friends…once. After we separated, I moved to New York, where I have remained pooch-single for nearly three years – and it makes no sense that I haven’t hooked up with a furry one. You’d think that in this town anything could happen, and if I’m being completely honest, it does. As I was returning home late one night, beaten up and limping from rugby practice, elephants were strolling down 34th street. Elephants. And I survived the session without a concussion that time. But I can’t yet commit to a four-legged relationship in the big city.
But I’ve been practicing secretly. I made sure to set up house near a park and bridges, have already picked out the perfect dog bowls in Chinatown, thought about names (Brad, Mitch, Byron), and even mapped out the veternarian/day-care situation. (I should go into human relationships with this much forethought.) No one knows I’m desperately seeking smoochie. Heck, I don’t even pet other dogs – even if they’re walking a really hot human.
For the time being, I’ve left my downtown Manhattan life to spend time back home which is itself an island, on the other side of the world, the extremely south and western island of Guam. I’m here to attend to family matters. I’m not in the mind or situation to scamper about as a dog-daddy bachelor, so what happens? Five awesome and available fellas start sniffing around, so apparently this I’m-not-interested strategy really works.
Imagine: Finding the one you’ve been looking for back home? I mean really.
