Then he fell in love. One April day, a 109 pound American blue nose pit bull terrier named ‘Slab’ marched toward him on 47th street. The dog looked like a molasses colored sumo wrestler on four short muscular legs and a huge head shaped like a United Parcel Service delivery truck. The hound appeared to be smiling at him. Kaspar was a goner. He liked animals but didn’t love them. He was happy to eat them when properly prepared. But in all his days he had never seen a creature like the burly and supremely confident Slab. It really was love at first sight. On the spot he tried to buy the dog from its owner at any price but no go. However he did get the name and telephone number of Slab’s breeder in Texas. Shortly afterwards, Kaspar Benn brought home a new roommate— the formidable looking eight month old gray pit bull he named ‘D Train.’ Vanessa said the puppy looked like some underworld creature in PEER GYNT. Dean said it looked like a Samoan. Luckily ‘D’ had an exceedingly sunny temperament. Despite looking so fearsome, he pretty much liked the whole world and was delighted to make friends with anyone, two or four legged. The only problem with that was his explosive enthusiasm: If some unsuspecting soul came over to say hello, D Train launched himself at the person, a squat sixty pound missile of airborne unbound enthusiasm and love. Cats or small dogs were no different. Strangers were horrified when this beast catapulted himself like a base jumper off the sidewalk into their chest or onto the back of their panicked pet.

Kaspar dutifully took his young gray ward to obedience school but that was an amusing bust. D made friends with all the other dogs in his class but never learned to obey even one command. You couldn’t blame him though. In his last life, the pit bull had been a zgloz on Oynah, that dreadful planet. Anyone familiar with Oynah knew joy came in mighty short supply there. The puppy didn’t know it, but in his new incarnation on earth he was just showing how happy he was to be away from that miasma of misery. At the obedience school Kaspar met an Italian woman who approvingly called D Train “svitato,” which translates as either screwball or unhinged. But as long as words like joyfully or happily were used as its prefix—joyfully svitato— then Kaspar would live with and figure out how to manage his happy screwball.