dylanbrody.com

            On July 3^rd, Nancy returned from a walk with Sir Corwin the Beautiful Dog-faced Dog, Brindled Beast of Sylmar.  She leaned in through the front door hesitantly as Corwin ran to me for his traditional home-from-the-walk greeting and threw the front half of his sixty-nine pound frame into my lap.  The leaning in through the front door, though, worried me a bit as did the tone in which she said, “Dylan?”  That was the full extent of my warning.

            The black, shiny puppy that bounded happily into our home on that morning won my heart at once.  We thought Labrador/Great Dane mix and we guessed seven to eight months old.  A veterinarian has since told us that we may be right about age, but he may be younger than we’d thought.  He also told us that the puppy may not be Labrador at all but entirely Dane.  He’s pretty big . . .  about Corwin-sized, sometimes seeming a bit taller, sometimes a smidge shorter but significantly longer of body.  He is quite certain that he’s a lap dog.

            We put up signs around the neighborhood but our quiet prayers that nobody would claim him have proven entirely effective.  He did not have an identification chip until we had the vet put one in for us.  The puppy lives with us.  At Nancy’s suggestion we have named him Lord Buckley.  Actually, I’ve been calling him Lord Buckley Sweetlips, Greatest Dane in All The Land.   (For anyone who doesn’t know who Lord Buckley was, look him up online.  Laurie Buckley, if you’re reading this, we pay no royalties unless he actually starts doing your Dad’s material)

            He is not – and please do not say this aloud in his presence – as bright as Corwin.  But what he lacks in natural intellect he more than makes up for in size, beauty and general wonderfulness.

            Corwin, who frequently behaves toward large puppies in a hostile and domineering fashion, has taken to him quite well.  He treats him already as a beloved younger brother and when Corwin’s old friend Roxy the Boxer comes to play, he schools Buckley sternly in proper and respectful behavior toward the golden alpha-mama, tackling him into submission when he pushes too far at her matronly sensibilities.  They wrestle hard and race about our townhouse skid-sliding into the walls, the three of them when she visits, the two of them when she does not.  Corwin and Buckley sleep, snoring and shifting and taking up a good deal of our bed each night and we awake in the morning, happily stiff from forced overnight contortions, to the sudden warm wetness of Lord Buckley’s adoring alarm-clock kisses.

            Life is good and joyous here in the Brody household these days.  We’re watching a lot less television and going for a lot more walks in the neighborhood.  We can’t wait to find out how big our new baby gets.  Come on by any time you feel like it to enjoy the grand entertainment of hot dog-on-dog action.