Dog Days
“You don’t want a perfect dog,” said the trainer. But I do. I really do.
Since the kids are all in school now and I am no longer the main person/influence/love in their lives, I have switched my focus to the dog. This is also possibly because I still have hope that I can mould him into a respectable member of society, whereas, with the kids, I’ve pretty much accepted that they are savages and there’s nothing I can do about it.
But the dog — maybe I can still make a difference.
Ziggy arrived into our home and our hearts when he was eleven weeks old. In his litter of seven, only one other puppy, a girl, looked like him: a scruffy little mop of brindle fur with big brown eyes and an unfortunate under-bite. He is ridiculously cute, as long as he is not a) wet or b) closely trimmed.
We chose him instead of her because everyone knows that male dogs calm down after they are fixed. Ziggy, however, seems to be the one exception in the world. Apparently, those things were just slowing him down.
He is a mixed breed, from a coworker’s litter; my kids say, he is half Schnauzer, half Yorkshire, half Chihuahua, and half Lhasa Apso. (I think they start fractions next year.)
