the id, the ego, & the single misfiring brain cell

a distraction from what i was really writing about, but whatever

I started on a post about gun control, and for some reason, I went down a rabbit trail that became a logging trail that became a farm-to-market road that became a highway. So this is the bastard post it spawned. I'll get back to the gun thing in a moment.

I've never been a dog person, really. I don't hate them. I like them. I just tend to be more of a cat person. (The earliest I can remember, our family had a great dog and at least one cat, and they were excellent pets. I just prefer cats. I think it's a personality thing.)

Sometime in '03, shortly after we got to Alabama (from California) and bought a house, Mich said she really wanted a dog. Noooo, she wasn't lonesome or anything. Frankly, she was a bit jittery staying at the place alone while I was working midshifts (aka, graveyards) as a crew commander. We lived in a good neighborhood, but we were on the very fringe of it. Behind us was an undesirable neighborhood where the cops routinely made meth house busts.

Mich'd done a lot of research on home protection and had learned that the best home protection available is a dog (or more than one). Most break-ins, she informed me, are crimes of opportunity. Easy and cheap deterrents are good locks (deadbolts) on the doors, solid dowels to hold the windows shut, and a dog. A dog that announces his presence, of course, is even better than a dog that's at least somewhat territorial. These aren't free or even cheap home protection ideas, but they are in most cases as good as or better than expensive home security systems.

Her request sounded reasonable to me, so we went to the humane society. I believe very much in saving rejected pets. All of our pets are castoffs of some flavor.

Mich busied herself with looking for The Perfect Castoff Dog while I worked at night and tried but failed to sleep during the day. She saw a video online, I think, of a mutt that the local humane society thought was so adorable (yet unadoptable) that they featured him on a local morning television show. When we went to the pound, there he was. He was in a pen by himself, living on concrete, cowering in the corner. When we came up and paused, he came forward wagging. We asked to take him for a walk.

His name was TJ. He was named after the puppycatcher who'd found him running loose on Maxwell AFB.

When we were walking with him around the grounds, a man passed no less than 20 feet in front of us going in another direction. TJ stopped, his hair stood up, then he went behind me and poked his head between my knees and growled. I could feel him trembling.

We knew we had to have this incredibly damaged puppy. He was about 1 year old then. Here he is:

By the way...start thinking now about what sort of mix you think he is.

We took him to our vet almost immediately, of course. Our vet was male. He could not complete the routine examination without muzzling the dog, who we named Maxx (which went with the TJ, but I more often call him Maxwell). The vet suggested we take him back to the shelter. We asked for a female vet.*

* And had no further problems. I swear, that woman could have rammed her fist up his ass and Maxx would have wagged and panted.

Mich would have trouble walking him, too. If men passed too closely on the sidewalk, Maxx would nip at them. The bigger and darker the men were, the more powerfully he reacted. Mich learned to take him to the other side of the street if possible when she met a big black man, hoping like hell the man didn't think she was racist (which he probably did, as we were in Montgomery, Alabama, where racism is more or less a default). We continued to take him out and show him love and support, and he eventually recovered from his overpowering fear of men. He's still a bit bent, and we're still working with him. But overall, he's a great dog.

Break to recentness: I spent much of the last year with my friend Lisarea and her family (i.e., Russell; The Little Muffin; the two felines, Bob and Battlecat; and Zsa Zsa). Zsa Zsa is a pit bull (or "pibble," as Lisa says). Here's Zsa Zsa, who is almost the most beautiful pibble in existence:

I'd known Lisa's former canine companion, Sluggo, who was also a pibble. Sluggo was awesome, too. He had cancer and had to go for chemo for a while, and was the belle of the ball every time he went. He would lie down (unrestrained) while they did the chemo, then go say hello to all the pets and the help. When he eventually passed from the cancer, all the staff at the puppy cancer center signed a condolence card for Lisa, Russell, and TLM (as did most of the regulars at her favorite online community). Anyway...after a few months, they got Zsa Zsa.

Pit bull breeds, by the way, are illegal in Denver. I mean, they are so illegal that if the authorities learn that you have a family pet who has never harmed anyone but fits the general physical description of a pit bull, they will break into your house if necessary to take it from you and put it to sleep. Any possibly pit bull breed admitted to the shelter is instantly put to death.

Over time, I fell in love with these dogs. They're known as "nanny dogs," incidentally, because they have incurable mothering instincts (these instincts extend to people, as well). And maybe I just have a thing for the underpuppy.

We (and by "we," I mean Mich) began by looking for cast-off Denver pibbles. We found one that was a family dog, had all her shots, was spayed, and the authorities were coming for her. We called a couple of times, but never heard back. I only hope someone outside the city gave her a good home. (Seriously...I'm not into dumping pets, but if I were in a similar situation with a beloved pet and had no other options, I'd take her as far as I could from home and leave her in a neighborhood somewhere, hoping someone would give her a home. Then again, someone might pick her up and try to use her for puppyfighting, which may be a fate worse than death. I don't know.)

And so Mich found Mandy in the local pound. She was labeled "pit bull mix." People said she looked and acted like she was half Lab, because she has a "soft mouth" and she's so smart and friendly. Here's a pic of her in all her glory:

EDITED TO ADD: It was just brought to my attention that I jumped from "Mandy" to "Coffee" without explanation. My bad. We didn't really care for the name she came with, and figured one would just settle on her over time. It did rather quickly. Before we picked her up, the pound called to inform us she had kennel cough, and if we didn't want her anymore, they would understand. We were already in love, of course, so we took the puppy home anyhow. It turns out that she didn't have kennel cough, after all. She had canine flu. By the end of the second day, Mich took her to the vet where she (the dog, not Mich) was put on IV hydration and antibiotics. We brought her home again two days later, and she didn't stop coughing for a couple of weeks. Mich called her Cough-y. Which evolved.

Coffee is what is commonly known as "pound trash," by the way. Not only is she obviously a pibble mix (scary!), but she's also brindle (not a desired color, I'm told). I think she's beautiful.

Now that we have this irrelevant but somehow unavoidable background, I'll move on to my thoughts about gun control.

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