The Dog With No Name

Shhhhh.

You hear that.

Nothing.

The sound of silence.

And doesn’t it sound great.

It's almost midnight and the whining just stopped.

Seconds ago.

As did the yelping.

And the barking.

But I’m sure it will be back.

Before I am done writing.

Just a few short hours ago the in-laws arrived.

And with them came a package of two.

Two from the litter of 13.

Two fuzzy, hairy, adorable purebred German Shepherds.

One for us.

One for my sister-in-law.


Eight weeks old.


It's like having a newborn all over again.


Except this newborn has four legs.


Our babies had a total of six.

I must admit I’ve been looking forward to this day from the moment I found out the momma was knocked up.

I love dogs.

I always have.

This whole “man’s best friend” thing.

It’s really true.

And now that I spend most of my life sitting at home.

Alone.

It’s great to have company.

We’ve had dog #1 since she was a pup.

Nearly five years ago.

Her name is Sport.

My son named her.

He always wanted a brother.

In fact, we had Sport’s sister too.

For about a week.

But we quickly learned that one was enough.

At that point.

So we packed Lucy up and sent her to a new house.

A good house.

But not our house.

To this day that makes me sad.

I realize that two dogs are ten times the work of just one.

But I believe in power by numbers.

And I wish we would’ve kept Lucy.

That’s probably part of the my wife’s motivation for getting a new dog.

We tried a couple of times before to add a playmate to the stable.

But it never worked out.

There was Lucy.

Then Cody.

Then Ryker.

Then Charlie.

And Zeppo.

Ok, not Zeppo.

But all the others each got their 15 seconds of fame.

And all of them disappeared.

For a variety of reasons.

Ryker was actually with us for a full month.

But he hopped one too many fences.

Great dog, wrong dog, wrong place.

Fortunately he found a new home very quickly.

And lived happily ever after.

None of the others were able to make our cut either.

Until now.

This time it’s going to work.

I just know it.

The clock started ticking when these pups were hatched in the middle of February.

And after two months of staring at the pictures on my email.

He is finally home.

He.

Well, he doesn’t have a name yet.

But it’s not due to a lack of trying.

Stone.  Buster.  Buddy.  Slate.  Lucky.  Hammer.

We have considered them all.

But none of them has stuck.

I thought it would be a good idea to come up with a German name for our German Shepherd.

I’m not sure my dad would’ve thought that was such a good idea.

He was true old school.

He wouldn’t even sit in a Volkswagen.

Or Mercedes Benz.

“Nazi car,” he used to say.

So the idea of his one and only son.

His Jewish son.

Having a German dog.

With a German name.

Oy vey.

Then again, he wasn’t crazy about me having a Korean wife.

At first.

Now considering this German dog comes from my Korean in-laws, I’m thinking it is ok.

My father in law told me that he has a friend who is a dog trainer in the old country.

His old country.

And his friend says German Shepherds are the smartest dogs out there.

The internet almost agrees.

According to animalplanet.com, the German Shepherd is the third smartest dog.

Behind the Poodle (#2) and Border Collie (#1).

Considering there are more than 300 breeds of dogs, the bronze medal is not so bad.

But it doesn’t matter how smart this dog is.

If he doesn’t have a name, he’ll never fetch.

So my son and I sat at the computer a few days ago.

And we searched the list of “most popular dog names”.

When two of those names were the same names as two of my kids, it was time to try a new plan.

Enter Google Translate.

We typed a series of english words into the box, looking for the German equivalent. 

And we tried a bunch.

Dog... Hund.

Barker... Marktschreier

Buster... Buster.

We kept searching and suche-ing.

But at the end of the day, we had nichts.

Nothing.

Except for a new dog.

A fuzzy, hairy, adorable, purebred little dog.

And that's something to celebrate.

In any language.






For the story behind the story of the pups, check out this blog:
The Barker's Dozen

A Barker's Dozen

You may find this hard to believe.

But not everything you see in the movies is true.

For example...

Indiana Jones, scared of snakes.

Harrison Ford, not scared of snakes.

Gary Sinise, has both his legs.

Lieutenant Dan, not so much.

Sandy, hot.

Olivia Newton-John, hot.

Ok, that one was true.

Now I’ve worked in TV for all of my adult life, so I know a couple tricks of the trade.

But I certainly don’t know it all.

I was reminded of that nearly 14 years ago.

That’s when my wife went into labor for the first time, with our first child.

Now my mom and dad had no brothers and no sisters.

So I grew up with no real nieces or nephews.

And that meant no babies.

And no experience with pregnancy.

Sure my wife and I took all of the classes.

Hee Hee.  Ha Ha.

But I had no idea what really happens when labor kicks in.

Dr. Huxtable can only teach you so much.

So through the magic of real life, I learned that unlike General Hospital, labor actually takes longer than 12 minutes.

And there is no commercial break in the middle of it.

Who knew?

In the case of my daughter it took more than 12 hours.

Of course it was all worth it in the end when the good doctor handed us our little girl.

Then again, I wasn’t the one in serious pain for more than half a day.

I did a quick google search to see how long the longest labor has been.

And I wasn’t able to get an official answer.

But I did see that one very unfortunate woman said she was in labor for 52 hours.

Ouch.

Of course, I have absolutely no idea how she felt.

But Bella does.

We just got word from the in-laws that after months of waiting.

And days of pacing.

Bella is finally a mom.

She and Dino decided to start a family a few months ago.

Well, it was probably Dino’s decision.

I’m not sure if they are legally married.

But these days, does it really matter?

My father-in-law has been anxiously awaiting the arrival of Bella’s babies for several days.

And Sunday she delivered.

The first call informed us that Bella and Dino were proud parents.

Of four puppies.

Bella and Dino are German Shepherds.

We were all excited.

But selfishly, I was thrilled.

You see, I’ve been hoping to get a second dog for quite a while.

And since my in-laws have three children, including my wife.

And since they now had four puppies.

I liked our chances of getting one of the dogs.

But Bella, that little overachiever, wasn’t done there.

A few hours later, the phone rang again.

Puppy #7 had just arrived.

All black.  All adorable.

Just last week they had taken Bella to the vet to make sure she was doing alright.

The doggie doctor said there were at least four puppies on the way.

Possibly more.

At last check, seven is more than four.

By this point, Bella was about 12 hours into the process.

She had to be beat.

I know my in-laws were.

In fact, they had switched to the zone defense so that at least one person could get some shut eye.

1000 miles away, I slept just fine.

When we woke up the next morning, the news had changed.

Again.

Bella had reached double digits.

Ten puppies.

This cute little thing had taken on an entirely different level.

By this point, I had a pretty good feeling one of those pups would be making the trek to my house.

Maybe more.

Those feelings got even stronger when puppy #11 was born.

Then #12.

And finally #13.

13 PUPPIES.

That’s not a litter.

That’s a kennel.  

My son found the record for a litter is 24 puppies.

24 Mastiff Puppies, born in the United Kingdom in 2005.

That poor Momma.

Our poor Bella.

Thankfully, she is doing great.

Dino too.

The plan is to keep the babies with mom and dad for the next six weeks or so.

Then our immediate family will increase by one.

Maybe more.

Free Your Mind

It has taken awhile.

But my wife has finally given in.

And it wasn’t easy.

But when we finally move into a new home.

We are getting a new dog.

I guess I should say, we are getting another dog.

We are not exactly turning in the old one.

SPORT

We love our little girl, Sport.

Yes, Sport is a girl.

We let our son name her.

And since he has two sisters, he was determined to give the girl dog -- a boy’s name.

Now we have tried twice before to bring a second dog into the mix.

The first time it was Sport’s sister.

Lucy.

But that only lasted a week.

Then we brought in Ryker from a local animal shelter.

But that only lasted a month.

Ryker was a fence jumper.

And our neighbors weren’t impressed.

But the third time is going to be a charm.

In fact, I have already started looking.

As John Wooden said, failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

So this time we are going to get the perfect match for Sport.

In fact just yesterday I decided to go online and search for “Free Puppies”.

It’s not that we are not willing to pay.

And it’s not that we are necessarily looking for a puppy.

But we had to start somewhere.

So I started at FreePuppies.net.

I’m Jewish and I love free.

My wife is Korean and she loves puppies.

How perfect.

At the top of FreePuppies.net is an explanation of exactly who they are:

Welcome to free puppies listings site. FreePuppies.net is a one stop free puppies classifieds to sell, buy and adopt free puppies. Check our puppies for sale section to sell your puppies for free.

“Check our puppies for sale section to sell your puppies for free.”

Huh?

I knew it sounded too good to be true.

Free Puppies?

Newman!

Well they say that nothing in life is free.

But clearly “they” haven’t heard about my 2004 PT Cruiser.

That’s the car my mom recently gave to me.

For free.

Ok, I did have to get the oil changed and radiator flushed.

And the registration.

And it did need a good scrubbing.

Then I did blow that tire.

But hey, the car was free.

Well, it WAS free.

The other night when I got home I shut off the engine and noticed that my “door” light on the dash was lit.

So I figured one of those damn kids left the door ajar.

Have you ever used the word “ajar” without the word door in front of it?

Me neither.

Anywhoo...  I walked around and opened and closed each of the four doors, plus the fifth in the back.

Several times.

I opened and closed so many doors, I felt like Monty Hall.

And still I couldn’t get that light to go off.

So I decided I would give the car a little ride down the block and by some miracle it would go away.

I hadn’t even left the driveway when I realized that not only was the door light still on.

But every meter on the dashboard was no longer working.

The speed-o-meter.

The od-o-meter.

The oil-o-meter.

But the dome light was working just fine.

In fact, it wouldn't shut off.

Ok, now we’ve got a problem.

This was Friday night.

At around 9p.

So every mechanic was closed.

But I figured if I left the car in the driveway all night, with the dome light on, the car battery would be dead by morning.

Sharp, I am.

So I drove the car to the local mechanic and left it there.

This way it would already be there in the morning.

When I went back at 7:45am, the door light was still on.

And the dome light was still on.

But the car started up right away.

Made no sense to me.

But it was in good hands now.

And a few hours after they got a look at the car.

My phone rang.

Apparently the dingledorf on the doohickey had a thingamabob near the whatschamacallit.

All I heard was rhubarb and garbage, peas and carrots.

The bottom line is.

The dash was dead.

But the good news is it will only take 5-7 days to fix.

Well, 5-7 business days.

And $650.

Including tax.

Of course, I said yes.

What choice did I really have.

Good thing the car was free.

Just like the new puppy.