He weighs 10 pounds – and he’s ‘The Boss’
February 23, 2011 · 0 Comments
By Dale M. King
My wife and I both agree on who’s the boss in our house.
It’s not her. It’s not me. It’s our dog.
Yes, little Peanut doesn’t just have the run of the house, he RUNS the house. He tells us when he wants to eat, when he wants to go out, when he wants to come back in and when it’s time to go to bed.
For a small dog, he seems to have a massive brain capacity. Sure, he shows us what he wants with body language, but he has an incredible ability to understand words. Even sentences.
I have to admit that he gets away with a lot of things because he is the most handsome (he is, after all, a boy) little doggie on the face of the Earth. Which was not always true. When we bought him in September of 2006 at the age of four months, he had to be the ugliest little creature on four legs.
My wife said she found him in the cage in the back of a pet store, cringing in the corner while other dogs yelped, “Pick me, pick me!” She took him out of the cage and walked over to me. The first thing he did was lick my face, as he had done moments before to my wife. So, despite his scrawny neck, a big nose and gnarly teeth, we bought him. (As I recall, he was actually on sale.)
His papers say he is a pure-bred apricot poodle, with lineage tracing to Georgia (there are references to his forebears having names like “Apricot” and “Peach.”) I think he is largely a poodle, but has other strains – Maltese or Lab. He was an exact match to a Maltepoo we met a year ago at the dog park in Delray Beach.
Doesn’t matter. We love him anyway. And we were blessed the first time he went to the groomer. After a bath and clipping, he came out looking beautiful. (The story of the Ugly Duckling came to mind) – unlike the dog I had left off that morning. When I brought him home, my wife said, “Where’s our dog?” I said, “This is him.”
As he matured, his intelligence grew – and so did his need to be with his “mommy and daddy.” and his Auntie Marggi. He also clings to our neighbors, Fran and Bob, who doggie-sit for the baby when we’re not around, give him the same level of love that we do – and we all get it back in return, with kisses, hugs and welcoming barks.
Peanut gets excited like no other dog. He comes running to greet us and jumps on us to be held. If my wife and I are together, he jumps back and forth, back and forth from one to the other. He just gets so darn happy that it takes several minutes for him to calm down.
And the opposite is also true. When we leave the house, he mopes. He has a dour face like no other dog can match. The only thing that helps is to say, “Wanna go see Fran and Bob?” and he springs up with joy.
I could go on with a litany of stories about his playfulness, his capabilities as a watchdog, his appetite for food of all sorts (he’s the first to the table for dinner) and his athletic endeavors — he can leap onto a tall bed in a single bound – but I think you get the picture.
So if anyone asks who’s boss in the house, I just point to Peanut and say, “He is.”
