The Origin Story, Part 1

Now's a good time to explain how Oates became Oates and Willie became Willie. This picture is from this morning as they waited for breakfast.

About thirteen years ago, not long after 9/11, I decided to move back downtown. It's easy to forget but there was a vague unease about living down there and housing prices in the West Village dipped for perhaps the first and last time. I had decided I wanted to live by the water. And I was getting two dogs.

The plan all along was to get a Siberian Husky, a breed I once raised as a puppy when I was a high school freshman.  And I wanted a companion for him, so he wouldn't be lonely when I was not around.

That previous fall I had been back home in Chicago, visiting the family of my childhood best friend, Alex.  They had a few dozen people over for their annual Thanksgiving Friday party. There were a few dogs there, mostly big labrador-types. Chasing all of them around and generally acting like a lunatic was one feisty Pug.

I had somehow lived in New York a few years by then without ever seeing a Pug, but I was instantly charmed by this one. So I when I moved downtown, I was getting a Pug.

In the spring, not long after I unpacked, I set about finding my Pug. It was not easy. For reasons that are hard to fully understand let alone explain so many years later, I didn't want a rescue dog.  My friend Allison had a rescue German Shepherd she adored but who would growl when men came over, even platonic old college pals like me.  He sometimes stood and put his jaw around my forearm, looking up menacingly as if daring me to provoke a full bite.

I didn't want a rescue dog. I felt that my siblings and I, who shuffled between unfit parents and orphanages, were already rescue dogs who did bite and did not often trust others.  No thanks. I wanted a dog from the very beginning, dogs I could fill up with love from the moment they hit their wee wee pads.

I tried to find a Pug breeder but kept striking out. I even joined a monthly meeting of Pug breeders, about nine elderly women in an airless apartment in the Village that smelled like stale potato chips. After the meeting, I asked if any of them had a Pug puppy. No, I would have to wait, I was told, until maybe later in the year. But I did not want to wait.

On the street I saw a woman with a puppy Pug. I asked her where she got her puppy. When she replied  that it was the pet store, I thoughtlessly asked her if she'd heard that was a bad idea. She thought for a second and said, "well, we love him!"

That was good enough for me. The next Saturday I marched right into my local pet store and asked if they had a fawn male puppy Pug.  They did and dropped Oates into a pen with me. He ran straight to my shoes and untied my laces.  In that instant his personality was immediately tangible to me, his clownish demeanor, his charming nonchalance and utter lack of need to impress me or make me love him.  I was smitten.

That night, however, I was hosting a party in my new apartment to watch the Tyson-Lewis fight. It was a charged evening, there were more women than men and they all seemed eager to see the convicted rapist get his beating. I thought of bringing Oates home right then, but a brand new puppy at my house with all of those people seemed to be just too much.  So, I decided to wait until Monday. It was a lot to contemplate as well.

Looking back, I have always felt guilty that I made Oates wait. That I ever hesitated at all. Knowing him now, he would have loved the party.  But I made him wait. His birth certificate, which looked like a diploma from a correspondence school, stated that he was born on Valentine's Day.  Like much of his paperwork, I assumed this was made up. That dogs from pet stores were of course of dubious provenance. But I've come to learn that he could have only been born on Valentine's Day. I did not know this then.

I did my best to distract myself from the decision.  The fight was a bust but the party was fun. It was a mix of old college friends, friends from work and others. Even Dorothy, the woman I'd moved to New York with and split from a few years before.  She brought a girlfriend who my friend Josh expressed interest in. When I mentioned it to Dorothy, she said he'd have to "lose the earring".  Knowing Josh still all these years later, it's astounding to me he ever wore an earring.

The party moved downstairs to the corner bar right across the Hudson River. A woman I had just met who was the roommate of my friend's girlfriend lingered expectantly and when I had a brief opening in my chat with Dot, this woman said "I have this feeling you have a history with her". Dorothy heard this, nodded and before leaving the bar whispered to me with a smile,"you should take that girl home". And so I did.

And two nights later I took the Pug home. And started our own history.