“Baloo”, said the vet “is a mix of lab and shepherd, and who knows what else. If you are interested it’s possible to do a DNA search.” “Are you kidding” I responded, “I just wanted to know the major parts of this Heinz 57 creation because people are always asking me “What’s he made of?” It’s a great way to open a conversation with a dog owner. Ask this leading question and be assured you will receive at a minimum, five minutes of a one-sided conversation, not to mention an immediate vault upwards in the character evaluation stakes because you have shown interest in their best friend.
I have heard that there are guys who walk around with “chic magnets” but I find this idea kinda hard to believe…Baloo fits rather comfortably on the other side of the spectrum – he’s a guy chaser! At a campsite once, a rather dishevelled fellow camper failed to see that the introductory phase of his conversation had gone on for far too long, and so I started to encourage Baloo to move in closer. The fellow backed up a step and asked me “does your dog bite?” “Yes unfortunately he does,” I said sadly. “There have been a few rather unfortunate incidents.” The guy turned and was gone, never to be seen again, and I patted Baloo on the head and gave him two biscuits.
Here’s my five minutes…When he was a very young puppy, Baloo was chucked out of the back of a pick-up truck and over a fence that marked the boundary of a campsite near Merritt. In the compound were a couple of guys from Vancouver who had been up visiting Alaska on their motorcycles. They contacted the RCMP who told them that abandoned puppies were often found in that area, and that they could take the puppy with them if they wished. Not knowing what else to do with it, they put him in a mandarin orange box which the pup fit in very nicely because he was so young, and they headed home.
The word went out about a puppy needing a good home and soon enough he was adopted by a lady who lived in an apartment. It didn’t take long for her to realize that this little puppy was more active than she had bargained for so he was offered out again. This time he was taken in by a fellow who had two standard poodles. However, the poodles did not take kindly to this new addition to the household, and there was a real chance that they were going to seriously harm the puppy, so the word went out again – puppy needs a new home. And after one look at that adorable little face…I, who was for the first time in two decades – FREE – with no kids at home, and completely and utterly FREE, (It bears repeating!) jumped in and adopted him. And life has never been the same…
My niece Lydia who was a fan of The Jungle Book took one look at the skinny little puppy and named him Baloo after Mowgli’s best friend, a sleepy old sloth bear, who teaches Mowgli the law of the jungle. The name I kept, but he has never quite caught the hang of being a sleepy sloth of a bear. When I took him to puppy training, the teacher asked me at various times – i.e. every 10 minutes, if I could take Baloo outside because he was disrupting her class. I thought “Incompetent Teacher!” and switched classes, signed up for more, purchased various expensive dog training “aids” and then followed that up by hiring a private dog trainer. I watched the Dog Whisperer – now that’s a soap if I ever saw one, and signed up for more classes…and well, you probably get the picture by now. Heart taken – brain no longer working…
I would love to hear your “five minute conversation” about how you ended up with your canine pal, or cat, or…? Please write about it in the comments – thanks!