My Experience with Dogs

Before we had Pappy, if you had asked me whether I'd ever owned a dog, I would have said sure. We had a couple of them when I was a kid. But at this point I'd have to revise that. The way that many kids own a dog (at least how I owned a dog) is by playing with it when they are inclined, ignoring it when they aren't, and not doing much else. There isn't a lot of end-to-end responsibility there.

To lighten up on myself, we got our first dog, Winnie, when I was five years old. I think it was Easter, and I remember that I couldn't decide whether I was more excited by the pup or my new plastic Batman glasses. I can't remember how long we had her, or exactly what she looked like. We let her run loose, and eventually she bit a neighbor so my parents gave her away. Our second dog, Fletcher, was a Lhasa Apso born to my Aunt's dog. Someone had taken the puppy, roundly neglected and/or abused him, and then returned him to my Aunt. We agreed to take him in as a semi-fostering arrangement, but he was a mess-- unhousebroken, really fearful, and with chronic separation anxiety. My brother and I were in school and both my parents worked, so no one was around to help him. Before too long, we found Fletcher another home.

Not an established track record of dog accountability there. My wife and I thought long and hard about whether to get a dog, and I like to think we have taken to ownership like ducks to water. But I'm always learning something new.

All of this exposition is leading up to a critical question for the experts, and I just don't have enough experience to know whether Pappy is unusual. Is it typical for a dog to be bow-legged and pigeon-toed in back, and knock-kneed and duck-footed in front?