May 23, 2003

• In case you missed it, I transcribed Episode Two of the continuing Adventures of Melody Andrewsdottir, Lady Shaman at Greyfox’s site yesterday.  Our Mel is always good for a few laughs, so if you could use a chuckle or two…. 

  
  

  That’s it for the old business, but in current news, today is…
  Koji’s birthday.
  The pup of my heart is three years old.  He is named after one of my favorite video game characters, a martial artist/archaeologist in Ehrgeiz.  I’m told it means “ancient writing” in Japanese.

  
  

  Around here he is affectionately known as Puppums, Doctor Snewt, the Snootmeister, the snoot that walks like a dog, and occasionally when we’re feeling really affectionate, Ko-jello.  The words we use most often to describe him to others are:  excitable boy.  It is an understatement.

  
  

  He becomes agitated when I start brushing my hair and putting on my boots.  When I pick up my purse to go out, he goes wild.  He wants to go, too!  In the car, he whines and howls and gets so stressed out that he gets stress diarrhea.  I routinely plan a stop a few miles down the road to walk him around and let him relieve the pressure.  That changes the pitch of the howls, anyway.

  
  

  Excitability is a common trait in his “breed”, the Alaskan sled dog.  That breed is so mixed that no kennel club recognizes it.  Around here they are generally known as “huskies”.  They love to run and they love to pull.  We don’t try to walk him when it is slick and icy out–he goes right onto his chain.  The clip for it hangs on a hook outside the door, so all I have to do is open the door and hook him up or unhook him to let him back in.  Very convenient, that.  Mark had that ingenious set-up for his dog, Leroy, when we moved in here.

  
  

  Koji’s true ancestry is questionable.  The couple who gave him to us apparently didn’t know, or didn’t want us to know.  They said his mother was a husky and his father was a collie.  He was part of a litter of eleven, nine of whom were males.  The females had been spoken for when they brought a big box in here with the nine boy dogs.  I lifted each pup out onto the floor, checked for obvious defects and found none.  Five pups were black and four were a honey-tan.  I think the tan ones might have been the offspring of the collie, maybe.

  
  

  Some of the puppies just lay there, whimpering.  We wanted one of the more active, curious ones.  Of that group, we chose the one who just walked around sniffing things, because all the rest were whining or howling.  Doug and I went for quiet and cute.  The pup we picked, finally, had an interesting face and curly black fur.  As he grew, his mask changed completely, and that curly undercoat was covered by the coat you see in these images.

  
  

  As Koji matured, we saw no evidence of collie ancestry.  His bone structure and behavior suggested doberman, and his coat looked like alsatian.  Where he got that insouciant little flop to his left ear, I don’t know.  As a pup, both ears were floppy.  As they started to perk up, we waited, and waited, but only one of them ever stood up straight.  The other one does come up occasionally when he is startled.

  
  

  Koji’s favorite posture is curled nose-to-tail like a giant netsuke.  His favorite place to curl up is my bed.  He slept beside the bed when he was a pup.  He soon learned that if he waited until I was asleep he could crawl onto the bed with me.  Then I learned that I liked having him there.  He is curled up asleep on the bed now, but a few moments ago I noticed that he had alerted and was looking out the window.  I grabbed the Kodak and got this shot.  Beautiful, isn’t he?

  
  

  

  
  

  Happy birthday, Puppums.

  • 1:25 pm
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