Spunky and me

I often wonder if we choose dogs because they resemble us or if they come to resemble us because we influence them to do so. For example, I adopted a shar pei/pit bull mix, a little black dog who had the most wrinkled, ugly face I have ever seen. I thought I saved him from extinction because I felt sorry for him, but the more I see him, the more I understand how he resembles me.

I am not suggesting that my face is wrinkled and ugly. Actually it is bearded and ugly. But I am suggesting that the longer I have owned Spunky, the more beautiful he has become. So I wonder if he has become beautiful because he has outgrown me or is he beautiful in his own right and I am the only ugly one in the family? It is not just his looks. He is lean and tending to get pudgy in his later life whereas I have always been pudgy and the thought of being lean is the impossible quest that I will never achieve.

What I am talking about in particular is that Spunky is a nervous animal, afraid of his own shadow and in many respects he resembles me emotionally. For example, the other day he saw deer across the field. He charged off the porch, raced down to the field, sped half way across the field until he realized that he was out there alone. He was out there alone because both my wife, our other dog, Sweet Pea, and I had better sense than to go racing after deer a quarter mile away.

On discovering he was alone, he screeched to a halt, turned to look for reinforcements, and seeing none, barked once or twice just to warn off the deer, then slowly trotted home as if he had done a good thing. When I told him he was a chicken, he gazed at me with innocent, brown eyes and lay at my feet. Now what, I ask you, is the point of arguing with a dog that has a loose connection in his head? Even our vet has said Spunky has some loose wires in his head.

How does this resemble me? Well, for years, my mother told me I was crazy and that something in my head was disconnected. I think she said that once when she found me dangling from the banister of the upstairs hallway. When I told her I was trying to stretch my five foot two inch frame into something like six feet tall, she told me I had rocks in my head. I had read this book that said one could stretch his height by hanging with his hands holding onto a banister and using the weight of his body to stretch his bones.

Needless to say, I did a lot of hanging in those days, especially before a date; even more needless to say, I am seventy-two years of age and I am still five foot twl. On the other hand I do have exceptionally long arms. When I see Spunky running from a fight, I recall the number of fights I have had to talk my way out of because I was five-two and the other guy was substantially taller. A short man learns diplomacy if nothing else.

Now I have more to say about the resemblance between Spunky and me, but I will not bore you with the details right now. Suffice it to say I have not learned whether he has come to resemble me emotionally or whether I chose him because I saw the similarities between us. I must say his self-esteem has heightened after he discovered he was one of the stories in my book, Tears and Tales: Stories of Animal and Human Rescue. He even has his picture on the photo album page of my website, www.krazyduck.com.

I suppose Spunky will want royalties and movie rights if we ever get to that point. Right now, he's content to accept doggie treats and scraps from my left over dinner.