Binderama60for60

He’s lying in his bed under the desk as I write this, keeping my feet warm. Like he’s done for most of this 60|60 exercise.

How it started.

Mary was nearly in tears soon after we brought him home. I was stuck on a business call with people in Japan and New York and California and couldn’t do much to help.

The thing hadn’t been here even an hour and he was bounding and bouncing around the place like Simone Biles doing parkour. He was leaping over entire sets of furniture–we’re talking the coffee table and the sofa and the end table, all in a single gazelle-like maneuver.

He still didn’t have a name. The shelter had tagged him as S’mores, but that wasn’t going to work around here. At that point, it didn’t matter; he was nuts and he was likely headed back to the place to make good on their 30-day return policy.

More than a year on, Bowzer is still with us and he’s the best dog ever. We can argue, but there really is no debate.

He’s is a mutt. He was listed as a German shorthair pointer at the shelter. DNA tests confirmed he’s 55% that, 35% border collie and the rest Australian hunting dog. That means: he is a worker, voraciously curious, forever a few steps ahead of whatever adventure we are on, and he will chase after and return anything all day long.

We’re not talking casual fetch; this is an obsessive, full speed, turf-flying spectacle. His feet barely touch the ground as he runs, and he soars five or six feet into the air for a reception. Then he sprints back, drops the ball at my feet and lies in wait a few yards away and low to the ground, steeled for the ball to be hurled again. And again. And again. And again. When nature calls, he usually doesn’t even stop to pee.

Some backstory

Mary and I have had pets throughout our lives, mostly dogs. For most of the time we lived together in California, we had Ruckus and Rampage. Mutts and littermates adopted in the Central Valley when they were eight or nine weeks. We noticed right away that they were different, asocial, and not given to authority, collars or leashes. They only wanted to be with each other.

A quick Google search explained that littermates can be problematic when it comes to socialization. On hearing that they were also born on a farm without much human contact, our vet strongly suggested that the problem would only get worse. Save yourselves and get rid of one of them.

It’d only been a few weeks but we weren’t feeling that. And we paid a price: 14 years of asocial dogs that we couldn’t walk in the neighborhood or take anywhere. They were not receptive to guests, so entertaining was stressful.

At home with just us, though, they were the most loving, loyal and easy-going dogs I’ve ever known.

Anyone who’s been through it knows how much pleasure a good dog can bring. They also likely know how heartbreaking it is to say goodbye. Recovering from losing Rampage suddenly and Ruckus in a planned procedure was hard. It took time to reconcile.

It was time.

After a few years of thrash (remember the pandemic?), we were ready for a dog. By that time, we were splitting our time between summers in rural Michigan and winters in upscale urban Scottsdale. We figured it would be easier to acclimate a city dog to the country than to take a country dog and stick it into a condo.

After our experience with Ruckus and Rampage, we had some strict criteria. Top on the list: it had to be a social dog. We had a few others:

• No puppies. Too much work
• Needs to be able to fly in the cabin of an airplane for our biennial migrations
• Light enough for Mary to pick up
• Healthy enough that it wouldn’t need special treatment right away

We visited the Humane Society nearby. Very well-run but nothing “in inventory” at the time. Mary came across S’mores on the website for the Arizona Animal Welfare League. I thought he looked weird. But we took a ride.

We toured the place. A half-dozen dogs at AAWL would have fit the bill. Maybe not all of the bill but enough. When it came time to meet S’mores, we were told he might still be in quarantine, recovering from a nasty bout of Parvo. The pup had been in total isolation for more than a month, poked and prodded, and he’d been passed around from shelter to shelter. As a result, the well-meaning shelter folks didn’t know much else about his history, how he entered the system, his age, or really anything other than the likely breed (which we should have also Googled).

When we met him in the little meeting area, he was a complete spazz. Gangly, hyper, in-flight and flighty. Mary loved him. Even though he’d been deathly ill, had been cut off from other dogs during a formative time in his development, was too heavy to pick up and too big to fly in a plane, and there wasn’t much history to work with, let’s bring him into our home for maybe the next 14, 15 years.

And so we did.

It took us a few days to name him. We were all over the map, still learning about his behaviors and traits. Stretch, Jimbo, Freakshow, Jerk. (Mary proofed this and objected to me calling him Asshole. For the record. But he is.)

Somehow we zeroed in on Bowzer. Back to Google: Bowzer with a Z, as in the lead singer of Sha Na Na, who had a huge mouth; not Bowser from the game world.

Very little fazes him–not thunder or lighting or fireworks or hours in the car–though he does get claustrophobic in places. He also gets so majorly excited to meet other dogs that he shrieks the most off-putting, shrill shriek that sounds like he’s being tortured.

And we’re still working on the separation anxiety. Mostly ours.

A few weeks ago we left him for 20 minutes to pick up some dinner. We returned to find that he’d snarfed a tray of Christmas goodies off the counter: dark chocolate brownies with espresso powder. He spent the night in the E.R. When we picked him up the next morning and paid the $4000 fee, the staff reported how much he’d enjoyed every moment, wagging his tail while getting his stomach pumped, his fur shaved, his pink puppy flesh punctured with needles and IVs.

That’s Bowzer. He can’t wait to go back!

Discipline

It was obvious that he’d had some training on the basics. Some good behaviors and some corrections. We brought in a ringer to get him into shape. She’s a lovely woman, seemingly of Eastern European decent, who had him in the palm of her hand instantly. Within days, she had him on the sit, stay, down and most amazingly, relax. With that word, he just melted to the floor. A year later, she still has him entranced.

That rarely works for us.

He’s Family. And he knows it.

We have some rules but not many.

He’s incredibly food-motivated. He will eat ANYTHING. I mean ANYTHING, including roadkill, no matter how much Mary and I react in hysterics. He claims a few pieces of furniture as his own but knows when to step off. No lap is off-limits; you’ve been warned. He thinks he’s a lapdog and he’s not shy about climbing up.

He likes to sleep in the bed. The very center of the bed. We don’t feed him from the dinner table, but he will probably train that out of us one day.

He gets on well with the cousins he’s met at the Lake and from LA. LA Archie, Chicago Archie, Bear, Bella and more.

At the Lake, he can be off-leash on the beach and in the dunes for miles of fetch–ball, stick, whatever you got. He loves the water, or at least doesn’t mind it. He’s constantly on the hunt for birds and fish and vermin, alive or dead. It’s not pretty. When we walk, it’s obvious that he’s mapped every past sighting of birds, deer, rabbits, squirrels, rodents, grasshoppers, cats, other dogs and nice neighbors and UPS drivers who give him treats.

He had a stand-off with a deer last summer. He was inside the house staring out the front window as the deer passed leisurely, maybe 10 feet away. It was cute as hell until it became apparent that one or both of them was about to launch at the other through the glass. That would have set a bad precedent.

He’s still a freak show and a jerk.

I accept that.

More than anything, Bowzer keeps us on our feet, literally. In the course of four regimented walks each day, we clock 4-5 miles, including a 4000-step morning constitutional through the mall across the street. He likes it when the Apple store opens and the (cultish) employees applaud the cache of waiting customers. He also likes coming upon last night’s unclaimed popcorn kernels near the theater. Maybe peek over the counter to see what the Wetzel’s people are prepping for the day.

A lot has changed since we got him. I’ve dropped 35 pounds which I credit to him. Mary and I aren’t working full-time gigs right now, but we are rarely at a loss for something to do. Fetch, scratch, shake, pull, feed, yell, admonish, treat. Repeat.

And I want to clarify something: Bowzer will do anything for food, but if I set a large pepperoni pizza in front of him and then throw a ball. No contest. The ball wins. I get the pizza.

It’s a journey.

Last year, soon after we adopted him, we were in the elevator with another tenant in the building. Bowzer was jumping, and we apologized for his behavior. “He’s still a puppy, we hope he’ll grow out of it.” The guy said he had a 17-year-old dog at home and he really missed this phase.

Not lost on us.

Time for fetch. Seriously, he’s waiting by the door.