A Dog on Thin Ice

Nora has come to the decision that my totem dog is a border collie.  That's a complimentary image, and she's described my professional life in terms that make the border collie seem like a reasonable choice.

But I'm expected to do the same now and choose a dog to represent her, and I suddenly feel as though my happiness for the next few days is on the line.  You know the old joke about the wife who asks the husband, "Does this haircut make me look too much like my mother?"  There's no good answer to something like that, right?  And that's just a yes/no question.  I now have a question ("What kind of a dog am I?") for which Wikipedia says that there are 492 possible answers, ranging from Affenpinscher to Yorkshire Terrier.  How does a guy get THAT one right?

And because she's had many dogs over the years, walking them through New York City where there are more dog breeds than people's nationalities, she's come to know something about all 492 of them.  So if I were to try to be safe and say "I think you remind me of a Cão Fila de São Miguel," she'd be, like, "Oh, that's just terrible!  How could you say such a thing?!?" And then I'd get twenty minutes of discourse on the traits of the Cao Fila and why it's nothing like her and why she was surprised and disappointed at my judgment and...

There's probably like eighteen of these dogs on the whole planet, and she'll have met five of them.

Me, on the other hand, I grew up in the working-class suburbs.  We didn't have dog parks.  We didn't even have dogs, come to think of it.  Another mouth to feed...  I remember that Chuck, two doors down, had some kind of a spaniel whose fur was always matted.  That's about it.  I think my family had the only dogs around.

My first dog, which we got when I was about eight or nine, was Dolly, a black-and-tan smooth-haired Dachshund who we got as an adult dog from somebody.  When Dolly died when I was about twelve or so, we went out and got a puppy around my birthday, a black-and-tan wire-haired Dachshund who I named Schultz, after Sgt. Schultz from Hogan's Heroes.

Sweet dogs, both, but I think if I were to tell Nora that she reminded me of a wire-haired Dachshund, there'd be hell to pay.

The other thing (and this is a terrible thing to say about the love of one's life, but the truth cannot be denied) is that Nora is a dog stereotyper.  Someone will mention a dog breed, and she'll say "Oh, those dogs are all crazy.  You can't train them."  She wouldn't say such a thing about Italians or bowlers or people from Poultney – well, she might say something like that about people from Poultney – but with dogs, she's more than willing to attribute standard characteristics to the many from the knowledge of the few.

So here we are.  I know next to nothing about dogs except for two Dachshunds and a chocolate Labrador Retriever.  I like dogs, in general, but I don't take it much farther than that.  And I have to develop an analogue dog for Nora, who knows every breed in existence and has firm opinions about each of them.

Nothing good can come from this.

The sonnet writers didn't often go for dogs as their source of comparison.

My love is like a red, red setter...

ehhh...

Let me not to the marriage of two breeds 
Admit impediments, love is not love 
Which neuters when its owner needs,
Or withholds treats, or from bed shoves.

It's the simplest, most harmless questions that hold the greatest peril.