The Kingslayer

“If you have dogs and children, then you know how much fun naming them (the dogs and the children) can be. I wanted…”

Our little pug. Just adorable!

Not every blog post here at JKFranko.com is going to be about “heavy” stuff. After all, life is like a box of dominos. There is a lot I have to share with you.

For example, pets. We currently have five dogs and a cat.

This post is an intro to our pug.

It’s the kids’ fault

Way back when we only had three dogs and a cat, I came home one day to a video that our kids created called Who Let the Pugs Out. It was all about why our family was incomplete without a pug. The main justification was that there were five humans in our home, but only four animals… Being the good parents that we are, and always wanting to encourage creativity in our children, we rewarded their video by beginning the search for a new pugpy (pug+puppy = pugpy).

(Note: we have since learned our lesson, and subsequent videos—In a Labradoodle’s Garden; I’m Turning Havanese; Hit the Road Jack Russell; New York, New Yorkie; La donna è Malinois; and To All the Pugs I’ve Loved Before (yes, they tried for another pug)—received praise, but did not result in adding more dogs to our pack.)

Better Target than Wal-Mart, I guess

Having decided to get a pug, my wife began searching and soon located a pugpy for sale. The process was a bit sketchy, to say the least. This was back when we lived in Texas. She found a seller and asked me (on a school night) to stay home and watch the kids as she was going to go alone to meet the guy at 9:30 p.m.

In a Target parking lot.

That was a big NO. So, we packed everyone into the car and went with mom. The guy arrived on time in a mini-van that looked like it should contain kidnapped children. I discretely did a quick Amber Alert search. Thankfully, it came back clean.

Could you please run thru the specials again?

In the back of the minivan were mama pug (didn’t get her name—I know, I’m such a typical male), papa (Sir Pugsley—to be fair, how could you forget that name?), and two adorable pups. We chose the male, and paid a cash deposit of $300 which I gave up for lost when the seller drove off promising to meet us in the parking lot again in three weeks once the pups were weaned.

To his credit, three weeks later we met at Target again, picked up our pugpy, and paid the balance. The seller has kept in touch and turned out to be a great guy.

Long live the king

If you have dogs and children, then you know how much fun naming them (the dogs and the children) can be. I wanted to name the little guy Gordo because he was already kinda “big-boned” and I expected his bones would “expand” over time. The kids dutifully called me out for fat-shaming.

After much back and forth, the kids settled on Rey which—for those of you who live in a cave—means “king” in Spanish.

The Kingslayer

But Rey was not the end of the naming process.

See, we had this coffee table that sat right in front of the sofa where we would watch TV as a family. We would all flop on the sofa with the doggies, of course. Well, all the other dogs (and the cat) would hop up onto the sofa with us. But, not little Rey. It’s not that he couldn’t. He wouldn’t even try. He’d just come up to my legs, paw at them with his right front paw, and whimper. So, it was up to me to pick him up and put him down. Up and down. This went on for weeks. And every time I did it, I would tell anyone who would listen that we definitely should have called him Gordo.

Well, one day mom and I were in the kitchen, and the kids stage-whispered that we should come quietly to the family room entrance “to see.” We did, and as we peeked around the corner, we saw that little Rey had finally managed to get himself up onto the sofa. The children were so proud. We all were.

Our pride was very short-lived, however. First, Rey made the little hop from the sofa onto the coffee table. A definite “no-no.” And then, before we could intervene to “gently” correct him… yep… he raised his rear leg, and peed on it.

In our eyes, he was no longer Rey. We re-named him Dum-Dum and christened the coffee table The Kingslayer.

Dum-Dum

Dum-Dum is now six years old, and I am convinced he has cognitive issues.

He continues to pee in all the wrong places. He is the only member of the pack (cat included) who still thinks that what happens on TV is real, and barks at any animal he sees on the tube (especially horses).

He is deathly afraid of horses. He was in the presence of a live horse once and got so freaked out, my wife had to pick him up to calm him down. He still pooped in her arms out of fear.

He does like to go paddle-boarding with us., although he is the clumsiest of the pack and regularly falls off the board into the water—he has a life jacket.

His big bones did get bigger. But, I think in this case the democratic process worked. He is definitely more of a Dum-Dum than a Gordo.