Hit by a Pitch

Although we have 100 dogs (slight exaggeration), we don’t go to the dog park very often. First of all, you can’t really take a toddler to the regular dog park. The other problem is that our dogs aren’t really good at it.

Coltrane hates the dog park. Hates it. As a black lab/border collie, he has the desire to herd other dogs but lacks the intelligence to figure out how to do so (no offense). So at the dog park, Coltrane runs from one group of dogs to another, barking his fool head off because he wants them to all be in one group together but he has no idea how to make this happen. Coltrane doesn’t chase balls; he chases dogs chasing balls. It was at the dog park that we realized Coltrane’s name should’ve been Urlacher — he’ll pretty much flatten any dog trying to fetch anything. This doesn’t make him a big hit with people or dogs at the dog park. The last time we took him to a dog social event, he spent the entire time yelling at the kids to get off his lawn and falling into the pool from which he had to be rescued because he couldn’t figure out how to get out (hint: stairs).

Peaches just tries to eat other dogs. In her defense, that last one looked like a big dollop of vanilla ice cream on legs, but I can’t take a dog who tries to eat other dogs to the dog park. That’s rude.

Sadie, obviously, is the brains of the operation over here. The problem with her is that as the Houdini of the dog world, an unusually small miniature pinscher can escape from most enclosures meant to contain dogs, such as most dog parks. The other problem is that as a small dog who believes she is a large dog, I’m always afraid bigger dogs will try to eat her.

So, although the effort possibly outweighs the reward, we take Sadie to a small dog meetup once a month, whether she likes it or not. This involves driving with Sadie in a car (fun times) and going to a dog daycare center with a reasonably decent fenced area that can contain small dogs.

Sadie, as a small dog who believes she is a large dog, has little use for other small dogs, so she occupies herself by wandering around being aloof, following us, and playing with Soren, who comes along because, well, small dogs probably aren’t going to hurt him and are fast enough to avoid him when necessary and because, well, if he didn’t, we’d never go.

To tell you the truth, I never used to like little dogs. I was a big-dog person. I’m still a big-dog person, but now I’m a little-dog person, too. Which I think makes me kind of weird, but that’s cool.

I am not embarrassed to say that this shit is straight from Gossip Girl:

When I was in college, my boyfriend and I got a cat. The cat was large and orange or brown (memory is fuzzy) and around 7 years old. He had been the subject of a “free to good home” ad in the local paper. He was the wife’s cat and the husband didn’t want him any more.¹ The wife sadly gave him up. We took him home, named him Siddhartha, and hung around while he hid under the bed for days. He was miserable and, by association, we were miserable with this poor cat who didn’t want to be away from the only person he’d ever loved. We called the wife and she took him back. I hope she and the cat at least lived happily ever after.

Then we got kittens instead. Like all good Iowa kittens, they were free and came from a farm. We went out there and saw a litter of kittens running around in the sunshine with their mom who had been a stray and apparently thought this particular farm in Iowa was a good place to have her kittens. I liked one of the kittens and I remember my boyfriend saying, “What about that one?” about another, so we took them both.

We took them home, named them Nietzsche and Kierkegaard² (Kierkegaard, for the record, was “What about that one?”), and lived happily ever after. Well, for a while.

That boyfriend and I broke up, as college boyfriends and I were wont to do. I had other boyfriends and moved to different cities, eventually settling into an apartment with a friend in Bucktown where it was still slightly edgy.

At that apartment, things went terribly wrong. Nietzsche, shortly after declaring “God is dead,” declared her intense loathing of Kierkegaard. All of a sudden, her litter mate and best friend was her mortal enemy. She terrorized Kierkegaard who holed up in my (allergic) roommate’s bedroom. I called veterinarians. I called animal behavior hotlines. Everybody said shit like “cats will be cats” and nothing helped and no, they never got over it.

So it came to be that I chose Kierkegaard, either because she was the innocent victim or because she was my favorite, and Nietzsche went to live with my parents, who lived nearby and had been without an animal since their dog died. From then on, Kierkegaard was my constant, as they say. She was, and I shit you not, my soul mate. She was with me through moves, law school, a judicial clerkship, marriage, a stint at trying to save the world through public defending, divorce, ill-advisedly shacking up with a younger man, moving across the country, being unemployed, being underemployed, buying a little house in the ‘hood, finding a good job, and eventually just when you thought I’d never do it, being pregnant.

As it turned out, we were going to have a boy. Our elaborate (not really) name calculus gave me naming rights for a boy. (We came to an agreement with the main proposition being that a boy would get Ben’s last name and I could pick the first name and a girl would get my last name and he could pick the first name — I love the idea of hyphenating but my name is way too difficult.) The thing is, dudes, boy names are hard. At least I think they are, especially when you want something different but not so different your kid is going to get his ass kicked over it.

We didn’t have any family names we wanted to pass on (you don’t really see kids named Vytautas today and the rest are too popular). Or did we? What about my soul mate, the cat? It’s not like we were going to name our kid Kierkegaard, but if Kierkegaard was named after Soren Kierkegaard, we could name our kid Soren because that’s kind of naming our kid after the cat. And even better, Soren is like my favorite name, ever, and it doesn’t remind me of anybody but an existential philosopher and my cat. That’s it. Done!³

I don’t recall it being very hard to convince Ben to agree to the name and, although I didn’t announce it to the internet until Soren was born, we told everybody in real life and nobody had a bad word to say about it. This must mean the name is awesome or I’m a huge bitch and nobody wanted to argue about it — either/or.

I didn’t know this at the time, but on the day Soren was born, Kierkegaard, who was 18, had just one month and three days left. I’ll always miss her. But it’s kind of cool that she’s part of my son’s story even though he won’t remember her.

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Notes
1. For real, if you ever have a significant other who “makes you” (that’s in quotes because it would be stupid for me to put a note in a note, which I’m tempted to do, to point out that your significant other cannot and should not ever “make you” do anything, which, duh, but sometimes people are somehow unaware of this) get rid of your animal friend, you might want to DTMF, and by DTMF I mean dump the mother fucker.
2. I believe I ranked high on the animal-naming-assholery scale for a while. Animals I’ve acquired since Nietzsche and Kierkegaard have been named, in chronological order, Valkyrie, Lilly (came with the name), Xochitl, Jupiter, Peep, Coltrane, Sadie, and Peaches. FYI, every dog is named Sadie.
3. I did have a tiny existential crisis regarding whether it’s okay to give a kid a Danish name when you’re not Danish and whether it’s okay to say Soren instead of Søren because that ø is totally bad ass but you’re kind of setting your kid up for a life of misery when his name requires a special letter even I have to copy and paste from the internet because I don’t know how to keyboard it.

This is without question the most exciting thing Soren has ever seen in his entire life.

(The good part starts 38 seconds in.)

When we watched this yesterday, he was actually squealing, giddy with delight, yelling “Cat cat!” (I have no idea why I taught him “cat cat” instead of just “cat.” It’s like pizza pizza but with felines, I guess, more = better.) and “Doggie!” Plus there’s music, so he gets to dance and oh my goodness that is all the best stuff ever in the universe right there.

I’ve been thinking about what to tell people Soren likes (in the event anyone asks before his birthday). Number one on the list would be animals. He has a Chicago Bears beanie baby that he carries around all the time. He snuggles with his stuffed cat cats in bed. Today, he requested, through artful use of the word “Mine!” and a finger point, that he be granted access to a stuffed bunny who resides atop a cabinet in his room and then carried that bunny all over the house.

He loves the dogs, especially Sadie, who has figured out that it’s best to play with him from under the couch, so he flattens himself on the floor between the couch and the ottoman and erupts with laughter as Sadie licks and paws at him from a relatively safe location. One morning when he was crying in his crib, I asked him if he wanted me to get Sadie. He replied, “Yes!” (He’s very good at replying “Yes!”) As soon as I brought Sadie, the grumpies were replaced by smiles and exclamations of “Saaaaaaaaaaadie!” Coltrane has a fun tail and Peaches is a reasonable stand-in for a pony. The real cat cats keep their distance but one day, I tell you, one day, they’ll be his pals.

I’ve been an animal person for as long as I can remember. We had just one dog when I was Soren’s age and oh man, did I love that dog. It might be a bit excessive to grow up with not just one dog but three dogs and four cats, but hey, I never said we weren’t a bit excessive. I’m sure he’ll have his share of embarrassing moments as a result of leaving the house with cat fur on the butt of his pants, but he’ll always have an animal or two around when he wants one (and of course, even when he doesn’t) (although I dread the day when he decides he wants Sadie to sleep in bed with him because now that I have a tiny, snuggly, bed-sleeping dog, I’m going to need a tiny, snuggly, bed-sleeping dog for the rest of my life, so we might have to get another one someday oooh Chihuahua).

So yes. Soren likes animals. And being awesome.

Here’s a Sadiebutt for you. I know it’s just want you wanted. One of her favorite hobbies is flattening herself halfway under the couch and just hanging out there. The cats do something similar with the bed — they’ll be chilling under there but, like, a tail will be sticking out and you know that cat thinks you can’t see him or her (it’s usually a tabby) but you totally can and then you kind of, excuse the expression, LOL because animals are such dorks.

This is our neighbor dog. She makes our Rottweiler look petite and could probably get you through the Iditarod herself. She loves us so much she’s been known to jump out a second-story window, jump off the roof, and jump 3.5 fences to get into our back yard. One time, she was on an episode of House Hunters on HGTV (they totally told her to say she wanted stainless steel appliances and granite counters in the dog house). I think I’ll ask for an autograph. Despite the fame and the jet-setting lifestyle, she’s very nice and always has time for her fans. You can totally rub her belly, too.

Also, here is an exclusive, awesome song for you. I can’t find this online anywhere. It’s Sally Go Round by DJ Sneak (holla!) and Monoman (Azari & III mix). Hope you like it as much as I do! (If you can’t play it, you can use Download Helper on Firefox, which is the greatest thing in the world, to download it.)

Sally Go Round

Update: I’m having trouble getting that link to work and I’m not sure whether it’s me or the file, so I uploaded the song to Grooveshark, too.