Recently, we had the great good fortune to meet Priscilla, who lives with her family on the East Coast. Happily, her family includes Jack, a 6-month-old, 55 lb. boxer puppy, and Gorda, who was a surprise: they thought they were rescuing a rat terrier (15-20 lbs) and instead, she really was a toy fox terrier, weighing in at 7 lbs. “She’s a mini-surprise!” says Cooper. Priscilla shared a beautiful portrait of her pups:
“Wow, you can use the words ‘clean’ and ‘white dog’ in the same sentence!” Cooper says. Since Cooper’s idea of cleaning up for dinner is shaking off the horse poop he’s been rolling in before he comes in to eat, you can imagine that our country bumpkins were pretty impressed by Priscilla’s beautifully groomed family… But she soon set us straight, and we haven’t stopped laughing since! In her own words:
Jack’s not all that white all that often… once again, the husband is to blame, and yes, i roll my eyes every day. Jack’s the great white boxer, he only looks clean here. he likes to roll in dirt, eat dirt and otherwise loves anything to do with dirt. he likes to eat mice. i have pulled two dead mice out of his mouth in his short 6 months of life, and i pulled a bird’s head out of his mouth last weekend–i wonder where the body went? lalalalaa, not thinking about that. so don’t think you have the market cornered on bumpkin!
and by the way, shortly after i took the picture, ostensibly to show my decorator girlfriend the new white flokati rug i bought, jack ate said rug.
also, we took jack to a puppy play group and THREE people came up to us to tell us about whitening dog shampoos. when complete strangers are recommending shampoo, you’ve got to know you have a dirty dog!
“My sides hurt from from laughing so much,” Super Coop says. But read on, to learn how changing their newly adopted dog’s name influenced her behavior… It’s doggone amazing!!! Again, in Priscilla’s words:
gorda is the toy fox terror, i mean terrier. she only walks on her front feet in the snow!
she was a rescue. when we got her, we kept her original name, haley. she had gone thru a disastrous 2 weeks with a family who abused her, so we weren’t keeping that name (besides it was “prancer” and i could not see myself calling that out loud in public!). and the name the temp foster mother, a teenaged girl, gave her was the german word for pretty: shon (umlauts over the o), and i was so-so on that, so we went back to her breeder given name, haley.
haley proved to be a VERY difficult dog, extremely fearful and a big time peeer. if you looked at her, she peed. if you said her name, she peed. etc. it was a real trial. then, i read a book by jon katz about his very bad sheepdog, boris. boris was bad to the bone. his trainer suggested renaming the dog, as it appeared to her that the dog misbehaved even more when the author said the dog’s name. he changed the name, and overnight, he claimed, the dog changed for the better. bad associations with his former name?
what the heck, i sez to meself, let’s try it. and, after a family conference, it was done, she was officially gorda. har har, that’s the husband’s humor: gorda is spanish for fat little girl; gorda weighs 7 lbs.
ANYway, the next day, no one could believe it. she was way less fearful of the family, and actually showed confidence, and didn’t pee every time someone looked her way. everyone kept reality checking one another, but it was true, she was different. the neighbors came over and confirmed it, not knowing we’d changed her name.
go fig. what’s in a name, eh william shakespeare?
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