The Love Child

One of my longest ongoing problems is that I tend to lack the ability to communicate consistently with the people in my life; I can be a poor, poor correspondent for long periods of time when I am undergoing significant changes, and hence catching people up is kind of a hassle. Case and point: the dog. Most of my catch-up conversations include the phrase "me, Jacob and the dog are all happy doing....", or something along those lines, and this is often responded to with something along the lines of "What! You got a dog? When, why, what kind, etc, etc." SO, to bring an end to all this, I am going to explain the dog, or Fang (or Budders, or Mister Dillinger, or Nutter-Butters, or Nutterson, etc...).

First of all, this dog is technically JACOB'S dog. He was born about eight years ago in some crazy lady's backyard in the woods outside of Steamboat Springs, CO. This (crazy) lady (we'll call her Crazy Mountain Lady) had a passion for breeding wolf hybrid dogs and unfortunately could not really afford to feed them, so after six months of malnourishing them, she finally came to the realization that she had to give them away. However, to receive a wolf from her pack, one had to prove that they truly wanted one and could understand the animal. Jacob saw an ad in the paper for "Free Mountain Dogs," and as he had scowled at the price tags on and tradition of inbreeding dogs like St. Bernards, Great Pyrenees, and German Shepherds in his search for the perfect dog, he decided to see what the ad was about. So, Jacob ends up at Crazy Mountain Lady's trailer in the woods, where he finds a pack of nine small, crazy wolf-like dogs that she explains are a mix of 50% wolf, and 25% German Shepherd and 25% Great Pyrenees. She tells him to pick one out that he likes, which he does (baby-Fang). However, the catch is that he can't have it unless he gets it to come to him. Now, these dogs that have lived in the woods for six months with no human contact other than the Crazy Mountain Lady were not exactly the most friendly, loving, golden retriever-like animals around, in fact they were scared shitless of any human (including Crazy Mountain Lady). But Jacob really liked one of them, and had done some research on wolf hybrids, finding out that they can make amazing companions if you raise them well. So, two visits later, the very patient Jacob gets little Fang to approach him, and Crazy Mountain Lady lets him take him home. And thus begins a budding romance between boy and dog.

Fang was terrified of people for about two years, but Jacob worked to train him, socialize him and eventually get him into the realm of what could be considered a "safe" dog. In the meantime, Fang proves himself to be one of the most loyal, compassionate, and yes, thoughtful canines on the planet. He is good with other dogs, and though he shies away from most people, he doesn't show any signs of attacking, and in fact becomes quite warm to those who he spends time with. And his personality is the most amazing part. He makes different sounds and movements to express his mood. He responds to conversation. He cries occasionally.

When he was five and living in Nederland, CO, I met Fang. He ignored me most of the time, and after six months would wag his tail at me and sometimes come up to me. I don't think I had the best approach, but oh well. And then Jacob and I moved to Taiwan, leaving Fang behind with Jacob's parents, where he would miss Jacob (and not me) for the next ten months. When we got back, he moved down to Boulder with us (technically Jamestown, where our first house was). For about two or three months, he treated me the same as he always had, which can best be described as just-above-indifference. But then a gradual change started to occur, and now after nearly a year, he shows me much the same behavior as he does Jacob. He is still very much Jacob's dog, and his best friend, but I do love the dog too, and felt pangs of sadness when we left him with Jacob's parents for a week to go to Texas.

Fang is now almost eight, and he's gotten sentimental with age. He allows most people to pet him, and except for the days he's especially angry or annoyed with Jacob and me for whatever reason (I swear he has doggy pms), he heels like nobody's business.