Blue is not my dog. He belongs to a neighbor down the street. He was one of the first dogs that Max met when we started to bring Max to our local dog run.
We do not know much about the first few years of Blue’s life. At some point his family came south from Canada for an errand and they left their dog in Pittsburgh for a reason that nobody knows. Blue’s condition at the time suggested abuse. Blue passed to my friend’s nephew, who thought of ‘having’ a dog in exactly the same way that you ‘have’ a swing set that rusts away in the back yard. After a while he, or someone, bought Blue a dog house, but by then Blue seemed to like sleeping out on the frozen ground. After a year or two Blue stayed with my neighbor while his nephew sorted out a rental situation. My neighbor and the dog both decided that the new situation served everyone better, and the nephew went with the will of the majority.
Blue’s breed background is an open question. You can see some timberwolf in his deep chest and a noticeable shoulder hump, and you can hear it in a bark that sounds like the end of the world. That wolf blood may let him tolerate cold that has my dobie Max shivering in the time it takes to step out for a piss. The other side is anybody’s guess. Flat-coated retriever maybe? The cold didn’t bother him nearly so much as being left in backyard Siberia. For all that timberwolf blood Blue loves people. He’s a people-centric bellyrub junkie that stays within a few feet of my neighbor whether he’s on leash or not. He practically hops up and down when he sees someone familiar and he’ll whine an eager, basso whine that reverberates in that wolf voicebox until he can run up, lean gently on your legs and look up as if you’re handing out steaks.
Some time in the past Blue stepped into a dark street and surprised a car or truck. He was lucky and made it through, but his hips never recovered all the way and his top speed now is a kind of bouncing lope. He will run after a ball, in fact he’ll practically beg you to throw it, but most of the time he’ll lie down where he caught it and zen out for the afternoon. If Max comes to ask for the ball he’ll hop up and bark like armageddon; it’s a bluff and Max knows it. Max, a card-carrying marshmallow himself, rolls over and lets Blue have his ball. If a person walks over Blue will lie on his back and waits for a bellyrub. At that point the only thing he needs is a snowdrift to burrow his happy muzzle in.
The name Blue, of course, references his icy-bue eyes. Blue is not my dog, though sometimes I take him out when the family is away. He is one of my favorites, though. If rescues all turned out like this I would take a hundred.
stuckinred
Peter Paul and Mary, Blue
I bet ya five dollars he’s a good dog toooooooo
Anne Laurie
Blue is such a cutie! Given his ice-blue eyes and what you say about his ‘timberwolf’ qualities, my best guess would be that Blue’s part Husky or Malamute, and part black Labrador. Never met a “sled dog” or sled-dog-cross who didn’t have a mania for snow… on the other hand, the few certified wolf-crosses I’ve run across have all had HUGE paws, like snowshoes or catchers mitts, not neat little dog-feet. And surprisingly, the long dense ‘arctic breed’ coat tends to be recessive. Of course, I’m also prejudiced by the conviction that it’s a lot easier to find labrador retrievers running around unsupervised, since they’ve been at or near the top of the most-popular-breed list for more than a decade…
Sko Hayes
Have to agree with Annie above, probably no wolf in there, wolf/dog crosses are notoriously shy, have very distinct behavior patterns and their vocalizations are very wolf like.
Blue looks like he’s very happy in his loving home and that’s the important part.
Southern Beale
“4 out of 10 millioaires in the U.S. say you need $7.5 million dollars to feel TRULY rich in the United States.”
Yes that is, verbatim, what I just heard on my TV news as the bimbette from CBS MoneyWatch announced the results of another stupid useless survey.
Yeah this day started off just swell.
Southern Beale
Here’s the story.
AND:
I just don’t know what to say to this. Feel better, millionaires? Maybe Jon Stewart was right: we need to drop these people in the middle of the projects and let them fend for themselves for a week.
stuckinred
@Southern Beale: Like this is breaking news.
Mark S.
Steve King, fucking insane:
Defaulting on the debt wouldn’t provoke a fiscal crisis; it would provoke a financial crisis of an unimaginable scale. These idiots actually think that would be worth it to stop Obamacare. They’re fucking insane.
Phyllis
@Southern Beale:
You betcha. We’re doing a staff development extended book study now on Ruby Payne’s Framework for Understanding Poverty* and a number of the teachers got a bit miffed when I suggested they probably couldn’t last a week living in the poverty some of our kids live in.
*She has her detractors, and I find some of her generalizations annoying, but there’s still good information to be gleaned from her work.
ETA: Who’s a good pup-pup? You are!!
J.
Great photos, great-looking dog. Hurrah for rescues and their rescuers — and neighbors.
JPL
@Mark S.: Republicans know that a successful health care plan could put them out to pastures for decades. The Republicans already alienated many minorities so what else do they have.
PurpleGirl
@stuckinred: Well, it may a new round in the meme usage. New York 1 just included a shot of a paper version of the story in it’s ‘In the Papers” round up. I think the newspaper was The Post. It may be oldie but for them it’s a goldie.
And, yes, as per Southern Beale, we should drop them into a area of poverty without a credit card or ATM card and just the money in their wallets. Let’s see how they fare for a week.
PurpleGirl
Who’s a good doggie?
Blue sounds like a really nice dog who is now enjoying his life and gotten beyond his earlier years’ problems.
TomM
Blue looks a lot like our dog Simon. We got Simon from a shelter and they told us he’s part Lab and part Husky. Blue and Simon share many of the same markings and the same barrel chest. Simon’s a people dog too.
PurpleGirl
nytimes.com/2011/03/15/health/15pets.html?pagewanted=1&src=dayp
Good article about pet/people/family relationships in today’s NY Times.
Svensker
@stuckinred:
Here’s Ian & Sylvia’s version
WereBear
Sled dog/wolf is pretty close, anyway. Story has it that Northern people didn’t mind a little hybrid vigor at all.
I’m so happy Blue finally got such a good situation. If he sticks that close, there might even be Newfie lurking in the background. Newfie mixes just might be my fave.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Blue is wonderful; thanks for showing us. I share Anne Laurie’s suspicions about his heritage, for all the same reasons. He is a delight whatever his pedigree, and I envy you your friendship with him. Thank the nephew’s neighbor for me as well.
trollhattan
@Southern Beale:
Maher said the same thing in New Rules, which I happened to watch last night. Maher frequently ticks me off but he was dead on with this rant, and the teabag trixie on his panel was appalled he had the temerity to abuse our patrician class so…shabbily and was babbling while he was speaking. (Earlier she defended the NRA against the real villins, ACORN.)
Anyway, Blue clearly has The Force. Such a will to live and still hang with his humans after being treated so shabbily. It’s a wonder we still deserve dogs’ trust.
quaint irene
Blue, Blue, you good dog, you.
Blue, Blue, you good dog, you.
;-)
Yutsano
Obligatory PUPPEH!! Damn you people for trying to incentivize me into buying a house! I’m holding off until my raise kicks in in September.
Tsulagi
Last week while in Ecuador came across a really sweet working dog appropriately named Goloso. Translated Goloso is male who likes sweets. His owner, a guide, told me if you put down meat and candy in front of him, he’d first go for the candy.
A mutt, he looked like mostly JRT and beagle. And maybe moving a little slower now than he once did as the guide said he found him in the jungle ten years ago. But once Goloso saw people putting on rubber boots for a walk through jungle to get to a river (went rafting) that feeds into the Amazon, he came alive getting all excited and antsy to start. His job was to make sure the dumb humans stayed on the right trail and often go ahead taking point a minute or two ahead of us and bark if he saw a snake or anything else not good.
He absolutely loved his job. Once we got to the river he came up to each of us almost demanding a head and belly rub as payment. Damn cute dog.
asiangrrlMN
Blue is beautiful. What a happy boy. I’m glad he’s finally got the home he deserves.
Paul in KY
@Southern Beale: All our millionaires seem to be whining grinches (or at least alot of them).
I’m beginning to think we had a much higher class of robber barons back in the 1890s.
pam
Half the reason I have this site bookmarked is for the wonderfully heartfelt posts about all your dog and cat friends.
WaterGirl
Tim,
Not sure if you have been posting all along and I had just been missing your threads, but I am happy to see your posts again.
With all the bad news that seems to be surrounding us, I kept your BJ thread about Max in an open window for a week, just to see his happy face and your wonderful photography.
My laptop froze today, so I had to close everything down, and after reading the news tonight I went in search of Max’s happy face. It took me quite awhile to find him – you might think about adding dog blogging to that thread in case anyone else goes looking for it. :-)
Jebediah
Thanks for sharing this – he’s a beautiful pup and I am always happy to hear about dogs ending up in a good situation. I am also a total sucker for any pup that demands belly rubs..