Meet Sawyer

In the wan­ing days of my pre­vi­ous employ­ment, I dis­cov­ered the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam. I should have put this link at the end of the post because I have no rea­son to believe any­one will come back when con­fronted with the unbear­able nature of the web­cam at the other end. I have only the promise of more puppy pic­tures to lure you but alas, they do not move. Go on, I under­stand. I have spent many days watch­ing the shibas too.

The more I learned about shibas the more I cov­eted one for myself. They’re smart lit­tle guys and not exactly pushovers in the obe­di­ence depart­ment. I knew that I’d be get­ting a dog when I moved and I didn’t want some sub­mis­sive thing that I could, if I chose, use for a mop head. I wanted a dog that knew I was there but could hold its own. But the only way I would ever get a dog is from a shel­ter or res­cue. Cute as those shiba pup­pies are, that kind of dog doesn’t spend much time in a shelter.

Once I moved I started trolling the local shel­ter web­sites. More time than I would care to admit was spent just look­ing at all the dogs out there, send­ing pho­tos to friends, mock­ing the first-person descrip­tions of each one. This is how I spent every evening for at least a week. And by evening I mean “start­ing at 7pm and going until my eyes couldn’t make out the puppy faces–long after they stopped dis­tin­guish­ing text.”

Three days ago one of the local res­cue groups posted a shiba mix. His name was Lugnut because the fos­ter mom who was look­ing after him had car trou­ble on her way to pick him up. He was small for a shiba and didn’t appear to be as indif­fer­ent to ran­dom humans as most. With his immor­tal puppy face I fig­ured he would be gone in a heart­beat, but I sub­mit­ted an application.

Res­cue groups make you fill out a lengthy appli­ca­tion. It’s worse than apply­ing for a loan. I even had to give ref­er­ences. I expected a drawn-out process and I wanted to get things going so I’d have a dog, Lugnut or oth­er­wise, to take on the road this hol­i­day sea­son. Besides, I thought it might take some time to round up the application’s requested stool sam­ple from every pet you’ve ever owned, liv­ing or dead.

The next morn­ing I had an email from the fos­ter mom invit­ing me to come out to meet the pup after work on Fri­day. I took this to be part of the appli­ca­tion dance, wherein you go meet the dog, the res­cue agency comes to your home and silently judges your fit­ness to be respon­si­ble for a dog, you make over-earnest pledges to care for said dog as if it were your own flesh and blood, they passive-aggressively remind you that not only is car­ing for a dog a sacred trust, it is in fact even more sacred a trust than birthing your own babies, you gen­tly remind them that you are in fact a man, which you imme­di­ately regret because now you’ve reminded them that men hate dogs.… None of that hap­pened. Of course.

The pup jumped up to greet me, as he would do for every­one whose atten­tion he could get the whole time we were talk­ing to the res­cuer. Once picked up he tried to wig­gle into the crook of my elbow, but he’s not quite THAT small. After I demon­strated my basic capac­ity for han­dling pets, the fos­ter mom sug­gested I take the Lugnut out for a test drive over the week­end. I hadn’t expected any such propo­si­tion but wasn’t about to turn it down. I left with one dog and one large bag of food and treats.

Every­one who sees him or his pic­tures imme­di­ately say that he looks like a hand­ful. This is in part because of his youth­ful appearance–he’s a year old and mostly full-grown–but also because of the glint in his eye that lets us know that he’s been pay­ing atten­tion and is onto what­ever scam it is we’re try­ing to pull. That much was obvi­ous to me, too; I assume it will be like liv­ing with a par­tic­u­larly wily teenager for the next sev­eral years.

Like any good teenager, what his photo doesn’t say is that he loves every­body and wants to play with them. Other dogs, other peo­ple, cats, birds, you name it…pup will insist on meet­ing every one of them. My cat Scott is not pleased. He doesn’t want to play, puppy, I’m sorry. Attempts to engage Scott in a game of tag were ini­tially ter­ri­fy­ing for the kitty and have now set­tled into deeply annoy­ing. Scott is retal­i­at­ing using the only medium he truly knows: feces. How apply­ing them to my car­pet will resolve Scott’s issues with the pup is unclear to me, but Scott’s motives have been inscrutable since he became half-blind and oth­er­wise … impaired.

The vote on nam­ing the pup ran 10–1 against the orig­i­nal Lugnut moniker. Since I think I am rais­ing a teenage boy, and like to steal names from lit­er­a­ture or movies or such­like, the first name that springs to mind is Holden Cau­field. That won’t work for what I hope are obvi­ous rea­sons. Some­one sug­gested nam­ing him after Tom Sawyer, another love­able, imp­ish young man who knew a thing or two about trou­ble­mak­ing. So meet Sawyer, my new best friend. Beware any paint­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties he may suggest.