How to purchase a dog

I recently became a dog owner for the fourth time but with this latest acquisition we, myself and my significant other, of the opposite gender, went though a process.  This was in great contrast to my first experience where my father took me to the SPCA, laid down ten bucks and hauled off with an adult male German Shepherd.  His significant other, again of the opposite gender, aka my mom, is surprisingly still with him.  My parents were in Northern Italy during the war and my father was a little miffed at the British after an off-course Wellington dropped a 500 lb bomb down the chimney of his house.  After that, he held the Germans in the highest regard. Since they had built the best V1 rockets and anti-tank weapons during the war, it was logical to assume that they built the best dogs too, so extensive research was not required in selecting a family pet.  He was given the name Rex thinking that the Latin label would somehow soften his teutonic edges.  Rex came home one day after roaming the neighborhood, as was customary for all large carnivorous beasts in those days, and went into a fit of coughing and gagging.  I thought he had a fur ball like many of the cats I had owned but no.  No fur ball.  It was just a cat’s head that was irritating his esophagus.  When that popped out, he was fine and he settled down to lick his privates.  The owner of the cat had found little humor in this, so the next day Rex was returned to the pound.  We were down ten bucks and we were left with four 25 oz. cans of Rover dog food for any possible future pets that might be brought into our household.

The second dog was vastly different from the first, given the difficulties we had had.  Well, not really vastly different.  Again it was German, after all that’s where the best cameras and motorcycles came from, it was large and very strong.  He was a Doberman named Bobo.  I have no idea where the name came from and clearly not a lot of thought had gone into that process.  Bobo didn’t last long either.  He had far too much energy, a huge appetite and a short, inefficient digestive tract.  What went in one end, came out the other in twice the volume.   I must ask a physicist about that.  Clean-up after that dog involved a shovel, a wheelbarrow and an ergonomic back support.

Number three was selected by my ex wife and was a total success.  Buddy was a Miniature Schnauzer with a wonderful temperament and warm disposition.  Selection of that breed was as per my ex wife’s Committed Relationships Manual.  She retained custody of it after we split but, if I remember correctly, pets were addressed in Volume 14, Section 12, Chapters 7 to 9.  There were also many other significant references in the volumes on general cleaning, towels, lint brushing, bedroom etiquette and shelf allocation for canned goods.

The spotty level of success with previous dogs led us to believe that we should adopt a more scientific approach to the selection of our next family member.  To begin with, the Canadian Kennel Club recognizes 183 canine breeds organized into seven groups.  If a pure breed was not a requirement, mixed breeds could be examined.  Given the 183 pure breeds there are 16653 theoretically possible combinations of first generation mixed breeds.    Make that 16652.  I don’t think a Great Dane / Chihuahua would work, either way you look at it.  Don’t go for the visual, it’s not pretty.  The first choice, that we made, was that we wanted a puppy and had some expectations as to what the puppy would look like when it reached adulthood.  We didn’t want a cute little fur ball later maturing into a two hundred pound behemoth with no teeth and two tails.  Clearly the way to go was with the pure breeds.  However, at 183 the number of choices was still sizeable, approaching that of feminine hygiene products (dry weave, scented, unscented, mini, maxi, wings, flippers …).   We needed help!  The Net came to the rescue.

The internet has close to four billion websites, unfortunately 3.9 billion are strictly devoted to blow jobs.  Finding a reliable breed selector database is still a bit of a challenge.  We used the one from the American Kennel Club, which is pretty much the same as the Canadian version except that the dogs are a little louder, a little fatter and drool more.  The dogs are selected based on certain criteria such as size, hair length, trainability and intelligence.  You punch in those attributes that you like and it spits out your best match – kind of like computer dating except that you don’t get Christmas cards from transsexuals for the following few years.   Initially I thought that the method would have potential until I saw that intelligence was a criterion.  I see intelligence as the ability to learn, to acquire complex information, to use inductive and deductive logic and to reconcile self awareness.  Dogs can’t do that.  They can sit, they can bark and they can run after anything that moves.  To me these behaviors do not display intelligence at any measurable level.  Sure, some dogs are smarter than others and in general dogs are smarter that slime molds, insects and squirrels but I don’t think that there is any danger that the unifying theory of physics will be elucidated by the canine world leaving us, mere humans, red-faced and thinking, “Why didn’t we think of that?”

So how do you pick a dog?  My plan B was simple:  Pick the one with the biggest, wettest nose.  Type that into your net program and out pops Airedale.  Sold.  An Airedale has a very long snout with a damp nose the size of a hockey puck.  These dogs are like giant bingo dabbers with legs.  Once I saw one, I knew that was what I wanted.

With 183 breeds out there you can’t just roll down to Petcetera and expect to find the dog of your choice.  You have to find a breeder.  I have always found that to be a curious term: ‘Dog Breeder’.  What is it that they do?   Provide soft music, champagne and a video of 101 Dalmatians?  In fact, and this is just an educated guess, I think that the dogs do the breeding themselves.  All the so-called breeders do is provide a venue and wash the sheets afterwards.  If they are called breeders so should hotel managers.  Occupation?  I’m a human breeder at the Westin Bayshore!

It gets even sillier when a breeder is found and later referred to as ‘My breeder’ or ever ‘Our Breeder’.  Someone not familiar with our culture would have difficulty translating this.

So anyway, we found a breeder and called ‘our’ breeder.  They were expecting a litter at the end of the summer and the price would be $1000.00.  Then my phone cut out.  It has call display, text messaging, a calculator, downloadable ring tones, internet access, call logs and an alarm clock.  The problem is, that it doesn’t work in my house.  I can use it to track apogees of communications satellites or monitor solar flares but if I want to talk on it, I have to go into the upstairs bathroom and stand on the toilet tank.  The breeder called back on the land line and we cut a deal.

The puppy arrived in October and we named her Bodica, after Boudica, the flame-haired queen that led the Britons in revolt against the Romans in the first century AD.  We dropped the ‘u’ otherwise the short form would sound like Buddha.  Having a middle aged white guy repeatedly yelling that in park would be unfairly cruel and confusing to the sedate crowd of my Coquitlam neighborhood.   But now I do feel I fit in with the other dog owners of my ‘hood’, standing in the rain with the pedigreed dog, the cold caramel macchiato in one hand and the bag of warm shit in the other!