My Rough Draft *updated w/final*

So here is a rough draft of a paper that I have to turn in soon. I thought it might be entertaining for you all. It’s supposed to be a narrative with a point. The point I tried to make is be careful about the breed of dog you choose because if you aren’t it might just bite you in the ass. Feel free to critique it, like I said I haven’t turned in the final yet and I can use all the help I can get! Enjoy =)

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“That one has two different colored eyes!” I exclaimed after spotting the pudgy little black and white puppy running across the smelly, feces covered basement floor toward me. He resembled a lab puppy in physique with solid black coloring over his whole back and sides. White fur with the characteristic black speckles of a dalmatian covered his front legs and stomach and came up the underside of his neck to canvas his snout before continuing between his eyes and making a point on his forehead. He had one brown eye like his mom who is a dalmatian, and one blue eye like his dad who is a husky. Before I could stop him he jumped up putting his two front paws on my knees and licked my face as I crouched near the ground, leaving dirty paw prints on my pants. “We had a lady who was supposed to come get him but, we can’t get a hold of her,” the lady who owned the puppy’s parents explained. They were desperate to home the pups because in the next couple of days they were beginning their move back to the states from Germany. “Is he the one I get?!” I asked excitedly. The lady’s husband looked at her and asked, “Is it OK if she takes Lucky?” When she nodded in confirmation I could not hide my delight. “My boys are going to be so excited, thank you so much!” I said. Little did I know, the personality characteristics of these two breeds result in an astute, domineering canine with the strength and stubbornness of an ass.

When “Lucky” (we changed his name to Stryker) was about nine months old he had grown to the size of his father, who was a rather large husky. His challenging personality began to surface at this point as well. Our family had moved from Germany, and bought our first home in a spacy neighborhood in southeast Alabama. Stryker refused to have his free spirit tamed and he wouldn’t allow us to walk him, he was one of those dogs who insisted on walking us. If he managed to get out front, he wouldn’t even look back to acknowledge us calling his name as he ran up the street to explore the neighborhood. Whenever he decided he had enough of the Alabama heat, he would jump in our pool and swim in content circles to cool off before exiting via the ladder.

Last summer we made the mistake of allowing him to accompany us on a family fishing trip at the Chattahoochee River. I was walking across some large rocks with him on his leash when something interesting caught his eye. He decided he was going to check it out regardless of what I intended to do. He yanked the leash so hard my body went sideways in midair, and when I crashed down on the rocks the wind was knocked out of me. I had a funny feeling in my foot and when I looked down I realized it had landed in a pool of water, which was quickly turning bright red with my blood. The top of my foot was split wide open, so my husband rushed me to the emergency room where I received 13 stitches.

The incident at the river resulted in my having to receive surgery on my foot around the same time Stryker realized he could scale the four foot wood fence between our back yard and driveway with the agility of a show horse. My husband, James, and his buddy fashioned some chicken fencing on the top of the wood fence to prevent his escape so, that while James was out of town I would not have to chase Stryker around the neighborhood in my bulky cast. How silly of us to think that some chicken fencing was going to deter him from his reconnaissance of the neighborhood. Stryker escaped every day, and left me baffled on how he was getting out. Eventually, I put him on a chain and was forced to do so every time I let him out. When James got home from his business trip he was conversing with the neighbor who informed him that he had witnessed Stryker escaping the yard by climbing the 6 foot chain link fence between our homes “like a man”.

Stryker is not only the master of escape, he is fiercely protective. He will bark at anyone who is not in his immediate family. If you were walking him through a park on a leash and a stranger stopped to comment on what a beautiful dog he is or, how cool his eyes are he would bark just to say “don’t touch us”. When he escaped he would run on to other people’s property and bark at them as if they were not supposed to be there. While he has never bitten anyone, he is pretty intimidating and, people do not appreciate being barked at by a strange dog in their own yard. Last month, he came close to giving an actual bite for the first time when a close family friend decided to playfully rough up our eight year old son. When Stryker saw our son in distress from being tickled, he decided to help him by trying to rip our friends face off. Luckily for our friend and, for us, his reflexes are on point and he was able to divert the dog with a fist to the jaw before his teeth made any contact.

Not wanting our dog to live it’s life on a chain, we invested in an expensive underground fence system. The system required us to bury a wire around our ¾ acre property line, which took hours of labor in the southern heat. We then placed a special collar on Stryker, which would deliver a warning beep if he approached the property line, and a shock if he tried to cross it. The system worked beautifully for about a month before he made the discovery that if he got a running start, he could cross the line quickly with minimal shock. Once again, our dog was AWOL on a regular basis. Our neighbors were now beginning to give us dirty looks.

In our last attempt to corral our free spirited mutt, we replaced the four foot wood fence with a six foot wood fence in addition to the electric fence system. I am happy to report that this has worked in containing Stryker, for the most part and, his escapes have been reduced to only about once a month. These are the times that he manages to push by the children as they come in or out the front door, from where he can do his running start to cross the electric boundary.

While I appreciate Stryker’s protective tendencies and, enjoy his company most of the time, I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I adopted this half dalmatian, half husky beast. Needless to say, his ingeniousness and strength have led to some difficult times. James and I recently decided to get a playmate for Stryker and, in our decision on which breed to acquire we were sure to carefully research temperaments, tendencies and physical characteristics. We settled on a sweet dopey Catahoula named Benjamin, who has no interest in running off, or doing anything besides licking strangers to death. Our family has now reached a contented balance between Benjamin’s agreeable personality and Strykers obnoxious one. Honestly, I don’t think we will be getting any more dogs in the near future.