Elvis Story #1: Coming Home

Business first: All is going pretty well on the home front, and I just hired someone for afternoon care. Her name's Meaghan, she's an Evanston native, and I think she'll work out great. More on her later.
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A few people have asked, "How's Elvis doing with all of this?" Well, he's still being fed, and he's got most of his pack around him, but I think he misses the lady who used to give him treats and let him snuggle in bed when Daddy wasn't around.

For those of you who don't know, Elvis is our 9 year old vizsla dog, and a neighborhood celebrity. There's a rich trove of Elvis stories, but I'll just start with the beginning.

Rach and I had a beagle named Murphy (there's another set of stories), who had to be put down in the summer of 2000 when he was only 7. At that time our kids were just shy of 5, 3, and 1, so I felt we had plenty going on in the house and no need for a new dog, but Rach disagreed. After a few months, guess who won?

We researched a few different breeds, with our main criteria being:

• Big enough to run with, but small enough to pick up and carry if needed
• Good with kids
• Not too much shedding
• Reasonably trainable

That brought us to the vizsla, a hunting dog which is also great with people. In general we found vizsla breeders to be very protective, almost annoyingly so: "What makes you think you're good enough for one of our dogs?" One of them had told us, "Oh, I'd never sell a dog to a family with a kid in diapers!" (I don't remember what her exact logic was.) Ultimately we found a more accomodating breeder out in Winnebago County (just west of Rockford) who had a couple of puppies left from a recent litter, so a few days before Christmas 2000 we packed up the kids and drove out there.

It was a clear, very cold day, and we had a decent amount of snow cover -- more of a pre-global warming Chicago December. We'd called in advance to make an appointment, and the farm wasn't too hard to find. The main dog kennel was a separate building, but the puppies were inside the house, confined to the kitchen. (One surprise was that the breeder's "indoor" dogs were a couple of shi-tzus, just about the foofiest little toy breed there is.)

We played with the puppies and talked with the breeder for a little while, and then picked what we thought was the calmer of the two dogs. (Vizslas are very high-energy, so we were a little wary.) Rachel drove home while I held the dog on a blanket on my lap, and we brainstormed dog names. We chose Elvis as something of a play on the breed name, and ultimately gave him the AKC name "Harrigan's El Vizsla Elvis".

One complication we had is that we'd already made New Year's travel plans with several other families to a resort in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin called The Osthoff, which had a "No Pets" policy. Could we really leave Elvis with someone after only a week? Or cancel our trip? Neither of those was palatable, so we decided to try to sneak him in.

The afternoon we arrived (a couple of days before New Year's) we got one of the luggage carts, and then took Elvis's travel kennel and stealthily zipped it up in a duffel bag. He went up on the cart along with the rest of our bags, and didn't yap at all. We'd already started to housebreak him at home, so we set up some papers on the balcony, and took him out right away. Every couple of hours we'd do the same, and this wound up working really well -- over the course of four days I think he only had one or two accidents. And we solved the maid service problem by not having any, just requesting fresh towels each day.

Elvis was already comfortable with people -- there was nothing timid about him. In our suite we had 3 couples and 5 young kids, so there was a lot of running and squealing. (The kids did, too.) I remember the kids standing on the furniture to avoid his sharp little puppy teeth, which they got tired of after a while. But in general it was a great, raucous vacation. After New Year's we packed up, put Elvis back in his travel kennel and zipped him up in the duffel, and sneaked him back out to the car.

That January we really settled in at home with our new dog.

Pat