in the beginning

On December 24th, 2008, Floyd Frankenweenie was born to a rescued female english bull terrier. No one knew who or what his father was.

It wasn't until April 14th that he was bestowed upon me.. after a number of emails and reference checks made by a Philadelphia bully rescue group. It took hours to drive there.. spent even more time getting and being lost.. but when we finally arrived to his foster home.. he trotted out, looked at me, and peed on the living room floor. Like a girl, I might add.

He lost his cookies all over me in the car, but sitting there.. covered in dog puke.. I knew this was the dog I had been searching for, for years.

I have still yet to figure out why Floyd was the last of his litter to be adopted. I remember not realizing when photos of the litter were sent to me.. That the dog I instantly fell for was him. I thought it was one of his already adopted brothers.

He went everywhere with me in Brooklyn. He would come to the bar and need to be put on a barstool so he could be amongst the conversation. We would sit with our pints, and he would munch happily on bowls of ice. He was quite the fashionable date.

In July we went camping. We spent a month in and out of a canoe, as we paddled close to 300 kms through the Temagami wiles. He made an excellent George Washington, often perching himself on the gunnel of the canoe, searching for our next camp site. He would get cold and night, and insist on shoving his way into my mummy sleeping bag.. Only to decide he was hot, several hours later, and scramble to get his head back out the top of the bag, so he could pass out again, snoring loudly in my ear.

Floyd grew and grew and grew, and it still seems like he hasn't stopped. They tiny puppy they expected would not reach 30 lbs, grows ever closer to 60, although he has never really stopped thinking that he isn't much bigger than a chihuahua.

Floyd, for the most part, is a very smart dog. Which often goes unnoticed, as he spends the majority of his time walking into walls, getting stuck under furniture, and falling asleep half way through climbing on or off the couch. He will learn a trick within seconds, provided you have a treat. He can open any number of doors, just by knowing which way the knob turns. And he always seems to know exactly where my shoes are located, no matter how well I think I have hidden them. He is fiercely loyal and stubborn to a fault, which is where I feel his troubles began on Monday...