INCOMING (FOUR-LEGGED EDITION)

This week's regular INCOMING was posted last Friday so I could concentrate on this:

• Santa Rosa Animal Shelter, Dog.  Well, we think it's a dog, but I'm not too sure.  When we moved to Florida, we were positive we would get an apartment, so we reluctantly re-homed Declan.  Of course we got down here and discovered that it was cheaper for us to buy a house that to rent an apartment.  Daughter Christina was upset that we were dog-less and cat-less and told us so.  Daughter Jessamyn also felt the same, as did our grandkids.  Long story short, we began to check out the local animal shelters online.  One had a photograph of what looked to be a waterlogged and filthy rat cowering in a corner.  The caption claimed it was a newly arrived dog.  A few days later the photo was changed.  The animal was no longer filthy nor waterlogged and was described as a Cairn terrier mix.  (Coincidently, the one-eyed dog my brother recently adopted was a Cairn terrier.)  It looked nothing like any Cairn terrier I had ever seen, but if you quint real hard and are in a dark room, well, you know...So last week we drove up to the shelter to take a look at this thing.  According to the intake sheet, the dog was given up by the previous owner because of excessive barking.  She also had a tendency to bolt out the door and run.  She had been spayed after having a litter of puppies (all of which had given away).  She was two years old.  She is house-broken.  Supposedly her name was Alicia.  (I think names are given randomly by shelter staff upon arrival.)  Well, she isn't noisy -- last night she barked for the first time (twice! at another dog who barked at her while I was taking her out); other than that, she's been little Miss Mute.  She does not bolt and run.  She doesn't like the outside and (when not sleeping) follows me around the house.  She had not been spayed -- the shelter took care of that before we picked her up.  She's not completely housebroken (grrr) so we take her outside often.  We don't know her age.  There's some gray on her muzzle but that could be genetic.  I have a suspicion she may have come from a puppy mill but that's only a suspicion and completely unfounded.  Wherever she came from, I don't think it was a happy place.  Despite desperately needing someone close to her, she's very timid.  She likes to be held.  And she's butt ugly.  Scraggly course fur.  Black body, brindle head and legs.  Her tail droops.  (It wags, but droops.)  She has floppy ears going in different directions.  She weighs only a few pounds.  I can see some Cairn terrier in her, but she's as much Cairn terrier as I am Charles Atlas.  And, of course, there's the problem of the name.  Kitty likes to name give dogs Irish names and for the past five days we have been trying out various names but none seemed to fit, although the grandkids liked Shamrock.  The dog does not respond to any names but will come if you click your tongue against the roof of your mouth; unless you're a member of a certain African tribe that uses clicks in its language, that's not a practical name for a dog.  I, myself, felt "Thunder Rat" was a pretty good name.  (The grandkids felt this was even better than Shamrock.)  So we've settled on Quinn because "You've not seen nothing like The Mighty Quinn."  She is a sweet (but ugly -- did I mention she was ugly?) dog.  Definitely not a VBD* and I hope we will prove to be worthy owners of her.

*Hat tip to Bill Crider.