Leave it!

Tonight the kids were playing a game with the dog where they were putting their feet in his face for him to lick. They thought it was a fabulously funny game. It made me think about his place in our family. Togo was born on September 1, 2006, which happens to be Nathan's birthday. They must be kindred spirits.

When we moved to Colorado, we rashly promised the kids that we would get a dog. Then after we got here and had mice in our garage, we ended up getting a cat first. But that is another story.

We acquired our newborn puppy at a charity auction for much more than he was worth, but he was so cute, and it was for a good cause. He is a purebred beagle, who we had fixed right away which kind of defeats the purpose of having a purebred. We bought him under the pretext that he was paper trained and would be a small dog. When we brought him home that night, it became quite apparent that he was in fact not paper trained, and as he started to grow he turned out to be not quite so small either.

The kids were in shock the next morning when they woke up and had a dog. He was pretty cute, but potty training in December was tricky, because it was so cold outside. He cried at night for the next 3 months, and I felt like I had a newborn on my hands, which I guess I did. Finally his bladder grew, and he stopped having accidents.

Coming up with his name was a family effort. We decided to name him after the almost mythical dog that Nathan used to tell about in bedtime stories. Grandpa Costello had a dog named Togo (named after a famous pre-WWI Japanese general), who had killed a poisonous snake that had come into their home, saving the lives of the family. The hotel that housed the charity auction we bought him at was called the Inn of the Rio Grande (being located next to the very river). Hence, Togo Rio Grande.

Eventually Togo Rio Grande grew large and became completely out of control. We decided it was time to enroll him in obedience school. This was very helpful and we started to get a little bit of control back. One of the commands we worked hard on was "Leave it!" which you say when you don't want them to get into something. He started to think his name was "Togo Leave-it." Togo was the proud graduate of the La Jara Institute of dog obedience, graduating Magna-Comuh-Hereuh.

Recently I noticed that things were starting to slip for him. He snuck into some donuts that were left on the table, and I decided we needed to do some retraining. We put a piece of hot dog on the table filled with a large dose of cayenne pepper. He left it alone for several hours, but eventually he couldn't resist the call of a hot dog. It must have really burned, because he licked his chops afterward for a good 5 minutes. We haven't had any more incidents, so hopefully he will live up to his full name: Togo Leave-it Rio Grande.