A Thousand Words

If you're up for seeing more pictures of our special guy, you can check out my Picasa web album.

Enjoy!

One Cherry Payout

A day passed after we brought Oscar home. He found his favorite spots in the house, mostly on the couches and futon. He did a lot of napping. I imagine that it takes a lot of energy to play and run at the dog park for an hour or so, which justifies all the lounging he otherwise managed to cram into his schedule. When he curled into that tight, perfect ball of fur and nose, and his eyes drooped and finally shut, he was the very Platonic ideal of cute. In other words, a perfect dog.

Of course, as parents, we have to change him.

While his cuteness was at near dangerous levels, his vocabulary was shockingly limited. He more or less got his name. At least, I'm pretty sure he knew it's his name. It was hard to tell sometimes if he's listening to the actual phonemes, or just the intonation that promises attention and affection. What's definite is that all other words were mere filler between mentions of his name and the jingle of the leash that signals the time for a walk. Those were sounds that mattered.

The SPCA realizes that their dogs, while having great beauty and making amiable companions, could use some finishing, and one of the ways that they help you achieve this as new owners is by signing you up for obedience classes when you adopt your dog. Thus we found ourselves returning last Sunday to the beginning of our story with Oscar.

The first class was sans pooch. Instead it was more about how we were going to be training the dog, and in a sense training us. Lisa, our instructor, broke down some basic rules for the class (no doggie-to-doggie meetings in class, bring a distracting chew toy for your dog when they're not working, and so on). She then pulled out the clickers.

The clicker is one of the things that we used to call our old TV remote controls, back in the day when the switches made a very audible click when you pressed them. I believe that we were the only family in America to alternately refer to it as a "zicker," which is really a shame because "zicker" is such a cool word to say.

Pressing them in those days took real hand strength, not like today's kids who are spoiled rotten by easy to use remotes. In my day, you worked to change between your four channels, and you liked it.

However, in the dog training context, the clicker is just a little noisemaker. It makes a very sharp "ka-klick" when you press it down and let it go, and our instructor explained that it's what you use to signify that a dog has done something correctly and is thus deserving of a savory reward. Our homework for that first week was to go home with our clickers and "prime" them with our canine friends. "Priming" a clicker consisted of clicking it in front of the dog and then feeding him a treat. The theory is that soon in the dog's mind, click equals treat. Click means "oh yeah, that thing you just did there, that standing there and looking at me in a goofy way, you're gonna get a treat for that." Having a clicker also means that if your dog does something far away that you like, you can click, and they know they did good and can come get the treat that they earned.

Oscar took some time to learn the clicker, but learn it he did. Pavlov would have salivated over such fine results.

With clicker and treats in hand, we returned to the SPCA the following Sunday, bringing Oscar with us for the first time. On the whole, the class went quite well. Oscar was immediately good at the first exercise, where he touches his nose to your hand to get a treat. He also had no problem with the "don't jump up to get the treat, you have to wait for it" exercise, making it look, much like an Olympic figure skater, too easy.

When it came time for the "sit" and "down" operations, those first real tests of doggie aptitude, I'm afraid to have to admit that our dog may have "special needs". The technique employed by our instructor was to use the treat as a lure to trick Oscar into sitting. You start with the treat by his nose, and move it back up along his head. The theory is that the dog stretches his head back for the treat and then, when it's just oh-so-close but out of reach, the dog sits back on his haunches, and then you fork over the treat, impressed with your dog's ability and happy to try again.

When Sara and I tried this, Oscar would watch watch watch the treat going over his head and then, when his neck had stretched beyond all reasonable canine limits, he decided, "Oh well, guess I'm not gonna get that treat," and would just look ahead again. No sit.

Lisa has class aides who walk by and make sure things are going OK. When one of them saw us struggling, he came by, tried it himself, failed, and then suggested that we go try it against the wall. "That way," he explained, "Oscar can't just back up to get the treat."

Oscar, while game for the treat, was unimpressed by his change of scenery and still refused to sit for the treat. That's when Lisa came by. "Hmmm, still not sitting?" she asked. We all shook our heads sadly.

Lisa took out some mega-treat of her own and tried to tempt Oscar along the obedient and enlightened path of sitting, but to no avail. "OK, so, here's the thing. Oscar's going to learn at his own pace," she admonished us as she tucked her treat back in her pouch. "You have to keep him in the game and make sure he thinks it's worth his time. You need to pay out more. Just getting his head back is a good first step. Work on that and he'll get it."

The class moved on to other exercises at that point, but I couldn't help feeling a bit like a Vegas hotelier who had just been informed by his slot machine vender that the little old ladies weren't lining up outside his air conditioned one-armed bandit dens because they weren't seeing enough payout. Oscar was not sitting because, in effect, we did not have the loosest slots in town. It was time to loosen up our odds, and pay out even on just one cherry.

So, now, we treat him if his head even gets just a little bit backward. And, you know what? He's still not sitting. But the hotel is comping all his meals.

What's In a Name?

"Acorn!" Sara shouted, earnestly trying to capture the attention of our new furry companion.

The dog lay between us, snuggled up against both of our legs. Nary an ear flip responded to Sara's attempt at appellation.

"I don't know about Acorn," I said, but dutifully scribbled it down on the back of the information packet from the SPCA.

"Why not? He's kind of acorn colored." Sara stroked his head and garnered, for her efforts, a small smack of doggy lips.

When Riggs came home with us that first day, his vocabulary was, to put a point on it, limited. He'd kind of look at you if you said his name, but only if you happened to capture his attention with some other inducement, like a nice treat, or the leash. He also didn't respond to sit. Or stay. Or down. Or any of those other basics that it would seem like a sophisticated adult dog like Riggs would know.

But no. In the knowing words department, our new dog was receiving the dreaded "check-minus" of kindergarten report card grading.

The bright side, of course, was that his lack of knowledge of his name meant we could change it without any consequence. An extremely scientific poll (and by that I really mean there was no science behind it whatsoever) of the people we called on the way home from the SPCA gave the following results:

• Everyone but Sara's stepdad: Are you going to keep that name? (in a tone suggesting that a new name just might be a fantastic idea)
  
  
• Sara's stepdad: What's wrong with Riggs?

Thus, we found ourselves ensconced in our living room, enjoying a glass of wine with our friends Becca and Damon, who were the first to come over and see the dog née Riggs in his new home.

"What about foreign words?" I suggested.

"'Masana' means 'Sunshine' in Xitsonga," Sara suggested. Sara had spent two years in the Peace Corps in South Africa.

I gave a "Hey that doesn't sound too bad" shake of my head and tried. "Masana! Masana! Whosagoodboy?"

Nothin'.

I shrugged, wrote it down, and petted my still nameless dog.

We worked through a slew of more ideas, most of which were shot down by the very telling "Becca and Damon Think That's a Stupid Name" test. (Most of these were mine, by the way.) "Boomer" had some traction for a while. When we tried out the "Boomer! Boomer! Good boy!" test, the dog actually managed to lift his head from his forepaws and look up at Sara.

"Is your name Boomer?" she asked him earnestly.

The look in his eyes spoke volumes about how much he liked Sara, but not very much about what he thought of his potential moniker. He gave out a sigh and put his head down again.

"Awwwwwwwwwwwww," Becca cooed. I knew that Becca had wanted a dog of her own for a long time. However, her lifestyle didn't lend itself well to having one at this point, living as she did in a very nice but very small half of a duplex in San Francisco and working as a lawyer down on the Peninsula. She was wisely hitting the snooze button on her doggie-ological clock. Of course, when I had emailed her boyfriend Damon to ask about vet recommendations on the Peninsula, it was Becca who had called back and said "I wanna come see the puppy!" before I could even get out "Hello."

"Boomer does have a nice sci-fi connotation to it," I noted as I wrote it down on the list.

"Yeah, but is your dog a Cylon?" Damon asked. Damon and I spoke the common language of nerds.

I hadn't noticed any red lights swinging back and forth across the dog's field of vision, so I was pretty sure he wasn't a robotic Cylon. He could have been one of those new-fangled "looks just like a biological organism but is still a robot" Cylons, though. He was certainly cute enough.

What this entire conversation and exercise was patently ignoring, though, was the fact that Sara had named the dog years ago. When we would talk about getting a dog, there was always a name that she would bring out for our imaginary future pet. She had been quite consistent about it. I guess she was trying to give me some sense of ownership, but the fact of the matter was this dog had his name already, and maybe she was just waiting for me to remember or re-suggest it before plunging in.

The next morning, as the dog came bounding down the stairs, Sara said to me, "I dunno about Boomer. I know I liked it yesterday, but today..."

"Well, what about Oscar?" I said, perhaps finally getting my cue. "You've liked that name for a long time."

"Oscar? Oscar!" Sara said, half at me and half at the dog.

The dog looked up, but more at the leash in Sara's hand than at Sara's voice.

And so, that day I found myself back at Petsmart in front of the automated dog-tag machine again, plonking my two tokens into it like an oversized tween in front of a video game at Chuck E. Cheese. The screen came up, and I typed in his new name. The machine went to work, and within a minute, a finely engraved blue metalic dog bone dropped into the dispenser.

Oscar. Our dog's name is Oscar.

One Word Contract

Were I a person who put stake in such things, the day yesterday was telling us that it was not the day to do it. To call the sky at 7 AM gloomy would have been putting a bit too much cheer on it, and our mood and energy seemed to match its cheerlessness. Sara slugged her way out of bed to go to swim, while I, the indolent of the morning, remained abed until after 9. I did manage to rise and beat out a couple of miles jogging.

Once breakfast and showers were complete, and with enough coffee on board to jolt our various systems into a sort of consciousness, we got into Sara's Subaru and headed north towards our destination. We had called ahead to make sure that, yes indeed, the SF SPCA was still open, and even on this dreary Saturday, they were processing adoptions until 5 PM.

Setting out I wasn't too concerned with meeting that deadline, but the weather did its best to deny us our mission. The rain beat on our car hard enough to drown out the best bits of This American Life. We pushed through past the worst of it, and emerged into the misty and windy parking lot behind the SF SPCA.

I said to Sara as we pulled up, "Now, you know, we have to be prepared to walk away."

"I know, I know," she insisted, but the mission look was in her eyes, and dissuading her would be a feat only a canine was capable of.

Once inside and shaken off of our wetness a little bit, we looked around at the capaciousness that is the SF SPCA's adoption center. The foyer is large, with benches and people and animals everywhere, but in that orderly, bustle-y sort of way that signals that work is going on and getting done. Puppies were trotted out in the hands of blue-gloved volunteers, who were very particular that you put the hand sanitizer on every time before you petted them, lest your fingers harbor some terrible puppy disease.

The dogs (cutie puppies included) are sectioned off into apartments with large viewing windows, so that you can wander the hallways looking for that special someone. At the end of the first hallway, we saw Riggs.

Riggs came to our attention first largely because of his roommate, a rambunctious 3 month old American Terrier who was determined to get Riggs to play with him. Riggs, a wiser and calmer 2 year old, tolerated this with a patience that would make some parents of four year olds impressed. When it got too much for poor Riggs, he snarled at the puppy, but never bit or attacked. He wanted his space. The puppy, of course, was oblivious.

There were other dogs as well. A big black lab named Willow, a cute roommate of hers named Spreckles for the dots upon his floppy ears. In the end, after walking, meeting, greeting, playing, hemming and hawing, we settled. There was a moment, after our first walk with Riggs was done, where Sara had her arms around him and she looked up at me and asked, "OK?"

I replied, "OK." And that was it, minus paperwork, a written contract between myself and the SPCA promising that among other things I would feed him, and the small matter of fees and class signups. But that OK, that little word passed between myself and Sara, that was the only contract that really mattered. We had our dog.

In the car on the way home, Sara sat with Riggs in the backseat as I drove through much calmer weather. She tormented me with blow-by-blow updates of all the cute ways that Riggs was snuggling up to her. We stopped at Petsmart to buy all the things that a doggie needs, including a wide variety of sleeping and chewing options. On the way home from the store, I rode in the back.

Up until that point, I have to confess, I wasn't totally sure. I mean, could this be it? I'd been dreaming of owning a dog like a storyteller weaves a fable, never quite knowing if those lands would ever be seen. But now, sitting in the car, was a four legged furry life. Was he my dog? I mean, really? This is really happening?

Then he put his head in my lap and sighed.

Oh. Damn. OK boy, you got me.