Word On The Street

I posted this last Wednesday; it was removed on Friday when Blogger was having problems, yet it was never restored!  Grrr.  Here it is again, all out of order.


Walking Dorothy is like strolling around with a minor celebrity.  The attention she gets is amazing.  People melt when they see her.  They stop and get kisses from her and ooh and ahhh and ask questions.  Men speak in falsetto; women squeak.  I've had people cross the street to greet her, and pull over in their cars and get out to give her a cuddle.  And after getting a full-fledged Dorothy greeting with kisses and hugs, people will tell me that Dorothy has made their day or made their evening.  She is quite the bulldogge ambassador!


Now I, of course, think Dorothy is adorable, but sometimes I have a hard time understanding the degree of fervor of the attention she receives.  I think it is her half-and-half face, and her head which seems too large for her skinny little body.  At any rate, I often feel like I'm the celebrity assistant, walking along carrying the designer shopping bags, while the paparazzi goes to town on Dorothy's appearance.


I also get asked all the time what kind of dog she is, and I am always happy to say "She's an Olde English Bulldogge" and then even explain the difference between an English Bulldog and an Olde English Bulldogge, if the asker seems receptive.  (Or if the asker seems to doubt my answer and makes a comment about how she seems almost too skinny to be an English Bulldog.  Sigh.)


Here are a few of the dogbreeds that passers-by suggest Dorothy might be:

• I have had two people ask me recently, "how old is your boxer-pit mix?"  I thought this was a strange question: if you think Dorothy is a mixed breed, why assume you know what the breeds in question are?  
• Most people at the moment assume she is a boxer.  This makes sense, in a way, as she is brindle like a lot of boxers, and she has had a growth spurt in her legs, so she is tall in a boxer-y kind of way.  Plus, Dorothy loves boxers!  (She has a boxer friend named Jamison, and she loves to bite his jowls.  His owners, funnily enough, will often hold Jamison still so that Dorothy can do so...which doesn't really seem fair to me, or to Jamison for that matter, who will voice his protest.  Dorothy thinks it's a great idea though.)
• A woman pulled over in a car today and asked me from her open window if Dorothy was a brown boston terrier or a pitbull?  When I said what she in fact was, the woman squealed loudly and then made that head-tilted, eyes-scrunched, oh-so-cute face people tend to wear when they see Miss D.
• One man stopped us the other day and asked if Dorothy was a Shar Pei (I've gotten this question before, too; Dorothy has a very rectangle, wrinkly face at the moment, so it makes sense.)  When I told him no, she was an olde English Bulldog, he said: "but she has Shar Pei in her, right?"  I said, um, no.  "But one of her parents was a Shar Pei?"  (At this point I was getting a bit peeved.)  Nope, I said, she's an Olde English Bulldogge!  And we went on our merry way.
• Many people think she is a pitbull, so I am used to that assumption too.  I did have a strange experience a week ago when a man walked by with his girlfriend and upon seeing Dorothy said in a loud voice, "A Teacup Pitbull!  I don't believe they are breeding miniature pitbulls now!"  And he said it with scorn, too!  I rolled my eyes, but refrained from saying anything, since he hadn't been talking to us (just about us loudly), but really!  Dorothy is a teacup anything the way babies are teacup humans!  She is a 4 month-old puppy and soon there won't be much that is miniature about her.

Then yesterday, a woman came running up and asked, English Bulldog?  But before I could answer, she started shrieking,  Shana Punim!  Shana Punim!  And then told me that is Yiddish for "pretty face."

Indeed.