Newman’s K9 Corner – White underwear – Part One

Luke is no longer a single dog. I have gone from one dog to two dogs having acquired a new little puppy bitch named Zigara. We got her the first week of June when she was eight weeks old. “Zigara” was named by my adult daughter….who is a dancer….and who wanted a Hungarian name to go with the Hungarian Vizsla breed. “Zigara” means Gypsy in Hungarian….so her name is “Szizzlin’s (her breeder’s kennel’s name) Dancing Zigara” call name Zigara. Much thought went into this on my daughter’s part and it is a perfect name any way you look at it.

I was not bright enough to stop there however. Through a somewhat unavoidable sequence of events I inadvertently committed to two new Vizslas from two different breeders in two different states. “Sherlock” joined our little red family last week. He was also eight weeks old at the time and he was named by me. About the fiftieth time I said “I don’t have a clue” when asked what I was thinking getting two puppies only a few weeks apart in age the name hit me. So his whole name is “Pennybrook’s (again the breeder’s kennel’s name) I Don’t Have a Clue” call name “Sherlock”. Little to no thought went into this name and it is also perfect.

Luke is not happy. The novelty wore off quickly with the girl puppy and he sees no reason whatsoever for us to have added a boy puppy to the mix. He is a good guy and he plays well with them but he has learned to sit with really long ears about thirty feet away when some sin or other has been committed by one of the little monsters. He worries a lot more than he used to now that he holds the mantel of “the example dog”.

Since I live at the kennel my life pretty much revolves around my work. Like a seemingly well oiled machine I seem to meld together personal loads of laundry upstairs with a kennel dog in the outside run downstairs. Frying an egg for breakfast and answering a call about training. However, it has been quite a bit of effort to fit in the monitoring of two puppies and their subsequent house training into that “well oiled machine”. My solution, thanks to the good weather and my wonderful newly fenced side yard is to leave the back door open so that they can come and go from the house at will, alleviating the worry of me tending to business when I should be tending to them at some important moment.

I thought I was doing pretty well with this whole thing, counting my blessings for that fenced yard just about every hour of every day right up to this morning when things went quite embarrassingly wrong. My first clue that something was amiss should have been the obvious absence of Luke in the side yard as I heard the puppies greeting a customer. My next clue that things had gone terribly awry should have been my new customer coming into the lobby with a slight blush, laughing about how cute those two puppies are while inquiring if they were mine. “Why yes they are” I said proudly as I looked out the window to see what cute thing they had done to make this man laugh only to see a pair of my white underwear go careening by the nice new fence like a bungee cord between Sherlock and Zigara.

What a great start to my day.

About the Author

Betsy Newman

Betsy Newman owns Moosehead Trail Boarding Kennel and Back to Basics Obedience Training in Newport, Maine. She is a professional groomer, trainer, show handler and a retired Animal Control Officer, veterinary assistant and breeder.