When we first met Ted, he was sharing a kennel at the Denver pound. His roommate greeted us with a burst of excitement, yelping and pawing at the glass as if to shout, "Me! Pick me!" Ted sat next to him, perfectly silent.
He was awfully skinny, at 35 pounds. His too-large ears stood at attention, and his too-small tail—apparently the victim of an accident, it’s only about 4 inches long and kinked to one side—brushed the floor in a vigorous wag. His eyes focused on mine, longing but quiet. My wife and I asked about him, and were told that he’d already been left at the overcrowded facility twice because the previous owner thought he needed "too much attention." We took him home. He’s been a part of the family ever since.
Ted was our first dog as a couple, added to our lives even though we both worked long hours. He was a 6-month-old mutt, and when we look back at pictures from his first day home, we realize he was kind of a scraggly-looking little guy. He grew into his long legs, bulked up to 62 pounds (he literally weighs the same amount every time we take him to the vet), and his tri-color markings, perfectly symmetric from snout to tail, cause most of the dog lovers he meets to pronounce him handsome.
More importantly, he turned out to be perfect for us. At 6 months, he was already house-trained, knew "sit," and had a good idea about "lie down." Still, he brought some of the joys and the trials of a puppy to our lives, and that sense that we were shaping him into "our" dog. As a short-haired mutt, he didn’t need any special maintenance for his coat, ears, nose, or anything else. He’s been healthy all along, and to this day, our vet notes that his hips are very flexible, unlikely to give him any problems.
It wasn’t all easy. I still remember his flat refusal to stop spastically playing with his leash as we walked on the sidewalk. He chewed my absolute favorite baseball cap and, oddly enough, a dog-training book we had purchased entitled Smarter than You Think. With time though, he grew into a darned good dog, and a smart one.
Of course, there are millions of gorgeous dogs out there. By most measures, many purebreds from Siberian Huskies to Jack Russells would outdo Ted in a beauty contest. Many of those dogs are also smart, well-trained, well-groomed, and just as much a part of their families as Ted.
Still, I know people make bad choices when they’re picking a dog. Maybe they just have to have a puppy, though they lack the time to give a dog the attention he needs. Maybe they have to have a dog who loves to run or do a job, though the owners work 70 hours a week, spend the rest of their time on the couch, and lack the energy or desire to give the dog the exercise he needs. Friends have done it. Neighbors, too.
Sometimes if we meet up on a walk, they’ll say something negative about their dog, and wonder why he can’t be like Ted. They’ll ask how we trained him, or what our secret is. And they’ll ask what kind of dog he is. They’ll often speculate, insisting that he’s got the body of a Doberman Pinscher, the ears of a German Shepherd, or the markings of a Rottweiler.
We don’t know what breeds made Ted into Ted. We don’t know why he rarely barks, or why he’s generally well-behaved, though our best guess is something people whose dogs give them trouble don’t want to hear. Truth is, Ted was the right dog for us when we got him, because we could give him the time, the exercise, and the care that he needed.
I don’t tell them that. I usually defer to the first vet we ever took him to, because her guess as to what kind of dog Ted is seems to hold all the answers to all of their questions: "He’s a Denver pound black dog," she said. "That’s all."
