Bumbly-Wumbly

Growing up, my family always had pets, whether they were cats, of which we had seven that I can remember, dogs, of which we had two, or fish, all of which I apparently killed. But there was a period of years, between our first dog and our second, during which my father was quite insistent that we not have a dog. This didn't sit well with my sister, because having a dog was basically the only thing that she wanted out of childhood.

My parents had been talking about getting us a dog when I was entering into the sixth grade, and my mom had made me a promise that we wouldn't get a dog if I didn't like it. As the summer was drawing to a close, there was an add in the paper for a free puppy, and my parents got my sister and I into the car and we drove down to see it.

This wasn't so much a puppy as it was a dog, and it was really more of a horse than it was a dog. It was too loud, extremely hyper, and very poorly behaved. I remember it jumping up at me, slamming it's heavy paws down on each of my shoulders as I swayed on the spot trying to keep my balance, and it barking right in my face. I did not like this dog, and I looked over at my dad and said "get it off of me now." It's not that I didn't like dogs, it's just that this one made a bad first impression on me.

As the owners of the dog scrambled to get it back in it's cage, unable to make it calm down or stop barking, they asked my parents if "[we] wanted to take it home now?" My dad's response was "we're gonna have to think about it for a while," but the answer was fairly clear that it was a no.

A few weeks passed and we still didn't have a dog. I didn't realize that my parents were so driven to get a dog, but, looking back on things, I recognize now that my dad was fairly lonely. He had been on strike from work for a number of months, and I think he was suffering from cabin fever, so the new puppy was going to be his little buddy in everything he did. If only he knew.

The summer was drawing to a close, and I had spent the day at my friend Jill's house. As the day wound to a close, I called home to ask my parents to come and get me, but it was my sister that answered the phone. "Mom and dad are out right now, but I'll let them know to go get you when they get in," she said. I asked where they had gone, and when they were going to get back, but she didn't really have very many answers for me. She then said "don't eat that, that's cat food," which was a strange statement for a number of reasons. I knew that she wasn't talking to me, because it wouldn't have made any sense at all for her to say that to me. I also knew she wasn't talking to the cats, because, as far as I knew, they were allowed to eat their own food, and I don't imagine that my sister was denying them anything, considering how fat they all were. And, unless my sister's stoner friend had been visiting and gotten so out of her mind that she was eating pet food, there was really no one else in the house for my sister to be speaking to.

"...who are you talking to?" I asked. Her response was short and sweet: "the dog." There was a long pause on my end, and I had to ask her to repeat herself, but she had, indeed, stated that we now had a dog. How they had managed to find a new dog in the last few hours was beyond me, especially since I was told that I would have a say in who we brought home, but I just hung up, turned to Jill, and said "...we have a dog now."

Apparently she didn't believe me, because when my parents arrived she looked at my mom and asked "do you really have a puppy?" to which my mother nodded and said "yeah, he's so cute!" Jill's response was a girly "AWWWW!" which was an interesting reaction to have without actually seeing the dog, but my reaction was to ask why I hadn't been included in the dog-buying. My mom furrowed her brow and chuckled a little, "we had just gone to look at dogs, but he was so cute. There was really no choice." Oh. Okay, then.

On the car ride home, I was prepared to hate this new dog. I hadn't had any choice in the matter, and I was convinced that we wouldn't get along very well, so I just sat in the car, silent and grumpy, waiting to get home and judge this furry new monster that was invading my life. Naturally, as soon as I got into the house and saw the new puppy, my speech degenerated into gibberish as I picked the puppy up and said "WHO'S A BOOJAHOODLE? DOOBA-DOO! HIBBY-JIBBY WOO!"

So I absolutely failed at hating my new dog, and, since he hadn't yet been given a proper name, I spent the next week calling him "my little bumbly-wumbly," but he still didn't really feel like my dog. It wasn't until we were watching an episode of the Profiler, and one of the characters was named Bailey, that I just started calling the dog Bailey. My family really had no choice in his name, because I said it so much within that hour that the puppy got used to it (also, it should be noted that for that first week, Bailey would wag his tail every time my mom or dad would say 'NO!' as he assumed that that was his name). Now that I had named the dog, he definitely felt like mine.