Last February, I adopted a dog. Or rather, I adopted a large quantity of kinetic energy bundled into a 10 pound shih tzu who truly earned his name. It was through the Tallahassee Humane Society, and I later discovered that I managed to bypass (not intentionally or knowingly) a waiting list for shih tzus. Guess it helps to have a friend of a friend…
I was placed in touch with the foster mom, who’d had him less than a week. When I went to visit, I was attacked at the door by a wave of handle-less mops, with one skinny little freshly shaved shih-tzu, about a year old, in the middle, like a surfer hanging-ten. (The mops were the pekinese that this woman bred and raised). The little con artist knew what he was doing, climbing up into my lap, lying on his back, and looking up at me with his big watery eyes. "You had me at ‘Awrr?’ "
The foster mom was calling him “Buster Brown”, but I knew a new name would be in order. When she told me he was a little escape artist, having a tendency to bolt out the back door before her other dogs whenever she opened it, the name “Houdini” came to mind as a possibility. This was further strengthened when I called several days later to confirm I definitely wanted to adopt him, and she said he’d escaped her fenced back yard twice.
He came to live with me on Feb. 6, and as I didn’t have a crate or puppy gate yet, I made a makeshift barricade blocking him in the kitchen when I left the house. It wasn’t long before he figured out how to leap it. He also managed to knock down the puppy gate I bought, with his super canine strength. I wondered if he also knew how to fly. But it was 4 days after I adopted him that I knew – knew – that Houdini was his true name. The name that was etched into his little puppy soul before I ever met him. The name that was intertwined into the core of his very being.
I was gone most of the day on Monday, Feb. 10, and a friend took him for several hours so that he wouldn’t be by himself for too long. She has two horses that she keeps at a friend’s place on the outskirts of town, and he was with her when she went out to feed them. Upon arriving, my friend got out of the car to open the gate to the pasture, leaving the car running but closing the door so that the dog wouldn’t get out. She returns to her Honda Accord to find that Psycho-Dog, in his excitement, has stepped on the power door locks – locking her out of the car. Keys in the ignition. Of course. Because the car is still running.
She goes into her friend’s house and calls the Honda dealership, hoping they can give her some other way to get in the car.
“Sorry ma’am, but you’re just going to have to call AAA”.
She is about to do so, when… here comes Houdini, trotting up to the open door of the house!
It appears that Houdini also learned how to work the power windows. The passenger side window is all the way down - his obvious means of escape. I have adopted Super Dog.
Houdini takes his driver’s test next week…
