I’m not looking at you…

There’s nothing like a good dog to comfort a hurting and tired heart.  A dog of substance. A dog of loyalty and personality.

I can’t say that I’ve grown up around dogs. I mean, our little gray French Poodle, Fifi, hardly counts.  At her worst, she didn’t smell bad enough to fully qualify. But she certainly had the love and the personality down.

Moving around as a member of the military was never a good deal for dogs.  I’d had a few over the years – Jimmie the Doberman, Fat Louie the…well, Fat Louie was a scrawny mutt with a face like a horse (I was just a pit stop on Fat Louie’s journey).  Micha and I had a great Jindo with a great name (Micha’s idea, and I have no idea how she came up with it) – Kenya. Later in life, I came to know a wonderful man from Kenya and I had to explain to him that I meant no offense naming my dog after his country. He got a laugh out of it.

Some years after Kenya, we ended up with a pair of rescues in San Antonio – a wonderful dog named Max and a spaz little black (and lovable) mutt with a crooked head named Aja. Our move to a very small apartment on the other side of the world (along with the departure of our children from the home) forced me to give them to a wonderful, outdoorsy woman – a move that I’m sure in the end they would have appreciated even more if they understood what they would have faced in Korea.

And this brings me to present day, with our little Maltese named Somi (spelled various ways) from the Korean 솜, which means “cotton.” She came from a friend’s family and she has certainly been a blessing to my wife. She keeps her company when she’s bored, which is a regular installment in Korean apartment life. But when it comes to personality, she’s got her quirks. Inside the apartment, she’s comfortable enough that she’ll love you (unless you grab her tail). But outside? Do not touch her. And do not let your dog near her.

Korea is not exactly a dog culture, but it’s getting there.  They love their dogs, but in many different ways.  On the scale of meat to pampered princess, they’re moving closer to the latter.  They have long had the rural equivalent of farm or junkyard dogs, chained or caged as burglar alarms for the country folk.   But now, bit by bit, they’re moving into apartment life as the pampered pooch: dressed up, ears dyed, royalty.  Unfortunately, this tends to a bit of immaturity in ownership, and it occasionally shows.  Dogs off leashes, or, one of my least favorite – dogs taking their owners for a walk. You can imagine how this all works against a dog like Somi.

I’d love to have a bigger dog.  I’m partial to black labs.  My grandfather had one named Mose when I was growing up, and although I was young enough that I couldn’t confirm it, I’ve been told he was among the smartest in the world. My mother’s partiality to the breed has brought her a couple over the years, and they’re beautiful and smart enough that I sure would love a good one…but they’re just not an apartment dog, and certainly not a my apartment dog.  Our dogs have to be shedless.  If they want to live with Micha, they can’t drop their hair around the place, that’s for sure.

And Somi doesn’t.  So she gets to be a cross between a spoiled little princess and a dog that lives under the strict discipline of a woman who knows how she wants it…and I think Somi can live with that.  She’s certainly had her moments.

I love dogs.  You could be a bikini-clad super-model walking down the street, and if you had a dog, rest assured, I wouldn’t be looking at you…I’d be looking at the dog. And if it’s a good black lab, you don’t even need the bathing suit…