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| From left, Nel, Linus, Koa. |
Perhaps even The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse. You should see the once-bucolic backyard. It’s got the debris, trenches and general despair of our own
Western Front.
Koa’s in town because son Zach is headed to Houston for a week for a video project. Nel and Koa are best buddies, so they romp and tug while Linus hovers nearby and growls.
They are fun to watch.
Nellie has the size advantage and massive head, but Koa, with the
narrow, pointed nose, is faster and more surgical. It’s not unusual to see Koa pull Nel across the yard, her
teeth clinched not on the fur of Nellie’s neck, but on the thick flubber of
Nel’s loose chops.
You’d think it’d hurt, but Nellie doesn’t complain.
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| Note the "D" behind Nel .... |
Nellie’s penchant for chewing things seems to have
slowed. I credit that to Koa’s
companionship. The last serious
incident I can recall was the bite she took out of the right leg of my jeans
while the pants were hanging on the “D” hook of my closet door – a clean, shark-like,
half-moon chomp that’d make that other Great White proud.
Nellie is even leaving Cindy’s underwear alone. This is progress.
The biggest news of the three, though, concerns Linus … in
matters of DNA and battlefield prowess.
First, to the battlefield. Linus, who I’ve dubbed The Little General because of his
recent Napoleonic tendencies, went walking one day with Nellie and me at
Briarwood, Zach’s old grade school.
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| ... and the bite out of my jeans. |
Briarwood’s a great place. The school is nestled in a valley of sorts, with thick
hilltop trees to the west and north.
On good days, water flows along a small stream that snakes along the
tree roots and undergrowth.
Linus has been coming to Briarwood for almost 13 years
now. And he has his routine … he
runs, off leash, from car to fence line, then into the woods. At woods’ end, he pops out, runs to the
neighbor’s backyard to roll in the thick grass, then circles back into the
woods, by the fence and to the car.
Nellie is still learning this path, so she’s always on a
leash. But I let Linus go free
because, well, this is his field and he knows it well. Any time he’s seen another dog, I’ve
been able to call him back and leash him up.
On this walk, though, it was dusk. As we circled the west-side hill, Linus caught a vague site of a dog on leash closer to the
school. He charged down the
hill. “Oh crap,” I thought. I ran
after him, Nellie in tow. “Stop,
Linus!” I yelled. “Linus, I said stop!!”
He ignored me.
Within seconds, The Little General was locking jaws with a
German Shepherd. Actually, that’s
not fair to the German Shepherd.
Linus couldn’t get a jaw in edgewise. But the Shepherd found some choice spots behind Linus’s
neck. Linus went running, yelping
like a ruptured seal.
I caught up with him under a bush … the fields of Briarwood now Linus’s
Waterloo. He was shaken – and bleeding.
A half-dozen unhappy vet trips later, I’m happy to say that
Linus is mending. And there are
lessons learned – for me (about leashes) and for Linus (about overcompensating
for being short.)
As for short … now to DNA.
Readers of this blog might remember that Linus’s lineage has
been a family issue. I’ve
described him as a mutt with a cork-screw tail, bulging eyebrows and a beard
like Albus Dumbledore’s. And, up until his bout with the shepherd, a mighty dog
… fearless, fearsome. Like Dumbledore!
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A bit of Cuban blood? |
Sure, we’ve all conceded that Linus is part poodle. But it’s the other part – or parts –
that have been, I'm sorry to say, bones of contention.
Meghan and I both felt strongly that Linus was part
Cuban-spawned Havanese … a conclusion based on Meghan’s chance discovery of a
dog in Bellingham, Wash. (Click here for details.)
“I'm telling you, this is it,” wrote Meghan. “I've solved
the 12- to 13-year (however old Linus is) mystery. I seriously don't think
that anything besides a blood test would convince me that he is not half
poodle, half Havanese.”
The Havanese, says the American Kennel Club, is a “small,
sturdy dog of immense charm.”
Yep, that’s Linus.
Cindy dismissed the possibility; Zach remained neutral.
Well, now we know.
As a Christmas present to the family, Zach and Meghan conspired to order
a DNA test of Linus.
Zach secretly took a swab of Linus’s mouth and sent it off
for processing. The results came
back via email, but Zach didn’t want to print them for fear he’d see the
findings prematurely. So Zach
forwarded the email to his close friend Sarah, a vet student, dog owner and
long-time friend of our dogs.
Sarah got the results back to Zach in a sealed yellow
envelope, and Zach tucked it under the tree.
“To All,” Zach wrote on the tag. “From Zach and Meg.”
The kids made sure it was the last present we opened that
day.
Zach and Meghan explained what we’d find inside … the truth,
at last, provided by the latest science.
We were riveted.
“Ha,” I thought. “This’ll end the debate. Havana, here we come ….”
Zach slid his finger under the envelope seal and popped it
loose. His eyes scanned the
results.
There was lengthy verbiage about the authenticity of the
results “as determined following careful analysis of more than 300 genetic
markers” going back “the last three generations of Linus’s ancestry.”
And the conclusion?
“Linus,” said Zach, “is a Miniature Poodle crossed with …
“… a dachsund.”
There was silence. Then …
“A DACHSUND?!!”
Meghan and I were half out of our chairs, incredulous.
“A WIENER DOG?!!”
“That can’t be!”
I said. “No way!!”
Alas, it was true.
Our Mighty Dog was a hot dog. That butt of countless dog jokes.
“Why did the cowboy buy a dachsund?”
“I don’t know.
Why?”
“He wanted to get a long little doggie.”
Sure, there were other possibilities, the good scientists said. A 21.8 percent chance there had been an Anatolian Shepherd involved along the way. Or maybe a Chow Chow … a 10.62 percent chance there. And a few others.
But the dachsund started to make sense. Strip away Linus’s crazy hair and you
can see his pointed nose, his short, stubby legs, his feisty demeanor.
The big clue: Dachsunds like to scratch the ground, dig in
the dirt. Linus loves to dig in
the bedcovers. Get him on a Michigan beach, and he’ll be head-deep in sand in
seconds.
Plus check out this blog site.
Is that not a Linus cousin on the left?!
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| Linus hits the beach. |
And honestly, it’s not so bad. Jack Kennedy owned a dachsund. So did Picasso. (His was named Lump.) As did E.B. White. A good writer, that White.
Even John Wayne owned one. Heck, the Duke’s dachsund, named
Blackie, saved Mrs. Wayne and their 20th-month-old daughter from a
nighttime fire by waking them up.
That’s Linus.
Fearsome. Fearless. Now battle scarred.
Mighty Dog … albeit of a tubular sort.
