I think you know that we lost Grumpy Dog, AKA Buddy, just before New Year, last year. It wasn’t long before Jingle Dog started giving us his “moopy face”, shown above, nearly all the time. He and Buddy had been together every day from the time Jingle Dog was 6 months old until he was four and a half years old, except for Buddy’s 2 surgical overnight stays at the vet. Jingle Dog was lonely and missed his playmate terribly. Sure, he had the nittens, but they didn’t provide the rough, active play that he and Buddy had enjoyed, except when they ran from him. Chasing the nittens through the house frequently resulted in this.
We began, jokingly at first, to interpret Jingle Dog’s persistently sad face to be a request for a puppy. You know, he was like the kid who didn’t get a puppy for Christmas. After just about two weeks though, we knew we were no longer joking.
In our family, finding adoptable animals is my job. Papa wants to just adopt everybody, and must be stopped! I started scanning the available dogs nearby, rescue orgs, humane shelters, adoption fairs, etc.
We talked about what kind of dog we wanted to adopt. In his ancientness, Buddy had presented us some problems, because of his poor mobility. Neither of us could move him without help. As we age, we thought it better to find a smaller dog; one that would top out at about 40 pounds, max. We’ve had such good luck with border collies, and like their core personality so much, we were hoping to find a small border collie mix. Ha! We live on the edge of a rural area and ALL herding dogs are quickly snapped up to become farm dogs. Herding dog breeders in the area (no, we don’t want a bred pedigree dog. We want a rescue!) have waiting lists several litters long. We had 2 border collie candidates during our search, but the rescue place really wanted to get those dogs into search and rescue operations training. They will be good at it and be happy doing it. I wish them many amazing rescues!
I looked for over a month more. I called about two more dogs, but one late adolescent was a biter and the other, a young adult, didn’t do well with cats. Sigh. There were hardly any puppies at all. And all the while, Jingle Dog was still giving us this face:
He had different versions, of course, but they all looked so pitiful, it was heartbreaking. This was usually a perpetually, persistently happy, laughing boy in deep depression. We were getting concerned about his well being. We went from saying he wanted a puppy to saying that he needed a puppy.
By March, we had modified our search to include larger dogs, and damn the consequences until later…
In early March, our favorite rescue operation (Jingle Dog was adopted from there and we support them with a small monthly donation.) showed 2 new puppies on their website! One looked to be a heavy GSD mix (Papa is a total sucker for GSDs) and the other looked smaller and was all black (and I’m a total sucker for all black animals). They were both 10 weeks old. I called about both of them. GSD’s foster mom said that she thought he would grow up to be 80 to 90 pounds. Yikes! WHOA! I quickly backpedaled. Smaller black dog’s actual mom was a small GSD and his dad was “heavily Labrador”. He currently weighed 18 pounds when freshly fed. He was estimated to grow to be 70ish pounds. I finally had a single candidate whose photo I could show to Papa and say “What about this cutie?”
That Saturday, we loaded Jingle Dog into the car and off we went to meet our potential new pup! The rescue place is about an hour from our home.
He was the last pup in the litter to be adopted, but all five were being adopted that day; all the pups had a waiting list. We met one of his littermate sisters that morning, as she was being adopted. She was a beautiful golden-blonde pup with obvious GSD markings. One of her ears was already standing up, although still leaning on top of her head…She was sweet and so pretty! ”Our” pup didn’t look much like her except for size and shape.
Not to say that he wasn’t handsome in his own right, just different. It had been quite a diverse litter. The sister we met looked the most like a GSD of the 5 pups. “Our” pup looked the most of the 5 like a Labrador. He had “flying nun” ears! (Soooo cute!) He was totally black. He was friendly and outgoing. He liked us, liked Jingle Dog, and Jingle Dog liked him. And, oh how excited he was to be the center of attention! He wanted to lick us all, and all at the same time! He squirmed and wiggled and romped his way right into our hearts in well under an hour. (Papa’s edit: “Ha! It was under 5 minutes!”) We paid the fee, signed the papers and brought him home.
Papa drove and New Dog slept on my lap all the way home. I’d never known a puppy this young. I stroked his fuzzy coat and handled his sweet, soft ears and big ol’ feet. I thought about the magic living in him. I whispered sweet stories about his new life to him. He mouthed my hands and sucked on my fingers. It was some special bonding time.
His shelter name had been Panther. Well, I was already thinking of Violet as our small house-Panther, and was reluctant to give that up. He didn’t really seem to respond to it, and had only had the name for about a week. We decided to rename him. But what?
I’ve read that a pet’s name can significantly influence their interaction with the world, and it makes sense to me. The way people react to whatever the single word is defines the animal. Name a dog “Killer”, for example. Think about the way people react to that, and how that influences the way they say it. We create self-fulfilling prophecies everywhere, with our expectations. I wanted this dog to have a magical name that people would say with delight.
We watch Gunsmoke reruns a lot. We’ve kept our favorite episodes to replay when there is nothing else specific we want to watch. There are 2 episodes (years apart) about an orphaned Indian boy, named Wonder. The actors and the character were cute and cunning. The character fiercely loved his guardian, and was awfully good at talking everybody around him into doing things his way.
Often, as I watched Panther, I wondered at what was happening inside his body and brain. What was he thinking?What was he learning? Are his feet ever going to be wired right? Are these stand-up ears or flop-over ears? Does he visualize like I do? (Hm….does anybody?)
And then, I began pondering the amazing fact that life even actually occurred on this planet out of all the barren planets out there, the magnificent diversity of earth’s life, and how we grow and change, yet are still ourselves. The word that summed up all this internal pondering was “Wonder”; proper noun, verb and phenomenon. Out of the blue, I said to Papa, “Let’s name him “Wonder.” Papa looked up at me and understood the noun, verb, phenomenon I meant. He grinned and said, “Alright.”
Ahem… Ladies, Gentlemen, Friends, PWBPeeps!
Please allow me to introduce our wonderful (😉) New Dog, Wonder!
Jingle Dog is his usual happy self again. And a big ol’ clown!
Wonder is going to be a big boy. Below is him chilling in the top of the box that the dishwasher came in.
This is Part 10 of a multi-part series named Nittens are in the House. Links to previous episodes are below. Please join me here on Thursday mornings and allow me to share my wonderful fur family with you.
- Part 1 -Nittens are in the House, -Prologue
- Part 2 -Nittens are in the House, -Ode to Nittens (Reprise)
- Part 3 -Nittens are in the House, -Chapter 1, First Exploration
- Part 4 -Nittens are in the House, -Chapter 2, Who Eviscerated the Mousie Toy?
- Part 5 -Nittens are in the House, -Chapter 3, Who are these Nittens Anyway?
- Part 6 -Nittens are in the House, -Chapter 4, Nitten Games
- Part 7 -Nittens are in the House, -Chapter 5, Cardboard Kitty Castle
- Part 8 -Nittens are in the House, -Chapter 6, Goodbye, Grumpy Dog
- Part 9 -Nittens are in the House, -Chapter 7, Peasants in the Throne Room