By PAT NEWMAN
pnewman@thecitizennews.com

This year's winner in the 124th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show was a fluffy English springer spaniel named Shameless.

She has good teeth, excellent breeding and impeccable behavior. But can she dance? My dog Nick can.

Somehow I can't picture that prissy pup kicking up her paws to the disco beat of “Everybody Dance Now... da, dada, da, da.” Thanks to intense instruction from my daughter, Nick has been boogying down since his puppy days. Now his paws reach my shoulder blades.

I've always been a “dog person” as opposed to a “cat person.” Dogs have personalities and are faithful companions. Cats are snooty and fickle.

When I first moved to Georgia and rented a house that came with an oversized dog house, my two boys immediately felt the need to fill it. Well, they liked playing in it all right, but eventually the younger son grew tired of always being the one to fetch the ball. Enter Frisky, a jet black mixed breed, part dachshund and part beagle with the IQ of a flea.

She is an avid barker, squirrel chaser and, after nine years, is still learning to sit and heel. Her advancing age has forced me to cease all attempts at house breaking and we may go in for Doggie Depends eventually.

Her one and only trick is answering the call, “Car dog!” Frisky leaps off the front porch and jumps into the back seat of the car with the grace of a much younger lady. There she sits and chews on her rump. Yes, she's quite a specimen.

The boys had the fun of raising a puppy, but my daughter felt deprived. She never had a cute, furry canine to cuddle with. By the time she came along, Frisky was, well, mature.

The top item on her 1998 Christmas list was a puppy. Surely she wanted a nice stuffed animal. Nope. Nothing would do except the real, living, breathing, eating pooping, slobbering thing. Enter Nick.

A few days before Christmas, we find ourselves outside K-Mart where a drama queen home from college is pleading with shoppers to adopt one of the shivering, worm-ridden pups she has tucked in a box. “Oh, please mommy? Please, please?”

We go up and down the aisles in K-mart until closing. “All those puppies must be gone by now,” I think. As we exit the store, there she is,the puppy broker, with one loner left in the box. Her parting words still ring in my ears, “Oh, he won't be big. I think he's part lab and part pointer.”

Right. Nick weighs about 45 pounds now, and can look me in the eye when he's standing on his hind legs. In about a year, he has chewed up five pairs of shoes, four books, hairbrushes, foil wrap, etc. Dirty socks are his favorite snack, but being the thoughtful dog he is, Nick always gives them back, in one form or another.

When we'd had him for about a week, my daughter thought he was magical, kind of like the goose that laid the golden egg. “Look, mommy!” She pointed to a green sparkly arrangement on the grass. We later discovered the source was the remains of some green glitter crayons Nick had digested for artistic purposes.

So, Shameless, you may be Best in Show, but I bet you can't poop sparkles. Long live the mutts of the world.

Back to the Top of the PageBack to the Weekend Home Page