John-John

Yikes... just typing the name brings back "icky" feelings that I remember as a bratty little brother. It was a very long time ago, but I vaguely remember pleading with my sister; "Please... Please don't name him JOHN-JOHN. 

Why not leave it at John? Yeah, John is a good name for a boy dog. But, "John-John" just isn't right! That is a sissy name and he will grow up to be a sissy dog, and everyone will laugh at him and us too!

John-John was an extremely cute Pekinese puppy that had a perpetually oblivious, happy-all-the-time grin on his face. You know... like Garfield the Cat's Ode.  He had a long, flowing, golden-yellow coat, and he pranced around with his fully dressed tail curled forward in a proud salute.

Sadly, I had very little to say about the dog's name, because he was a gift to my sister from her then boyfriend.... yeah, you guessed it... John.  (Gag-shudder). I should probably apologize to her husband of the past several decades (my brother-in-law Scott) for bringing that up. I wouldn't have, but there is just no way to explain "John-John" and still appear blameless. We must carefully dissect history in cases like this.

Who couldn't love this dog? Perky, grinning continuously, and always ready for a belly rub. One of his favorite pastimes was to kill work gloves. If you put one of them on your hand, the fun was instantaneous.

First, he would growl and pounce until he had a leathery finger firmly in his teeth. Then it became an impressive tug-of-war, which ultimately he would win. He pulls the glove from your hand, shakes it violently several times, and then leaves it to die in agony on the carpet.

John-John's next favorite (well, perhaps his favorite) activity was eating cheese. Someone taught him a couple of tricks that he could do to earn his cheese, and he was more than willing to work for it. He would stand up on his hind legs and walk around for an amazingly long time, while pursuing the cheese.

He also learned to "roll-over" for his cheese. It seemed that you only had to talk about cheese, and he would flop down and roll over. If the cheese didn't come fast enough, he would flop and roll, and flop and roll all over the place. Before you could even say roll over, he may have done it six times. Sort of like... don't waste time with silly chitchat, just gimme the dog-gone cheese!

John-John was a good buddy, and I don't think he even cared about the sissy name. Sometimes, I remember him and think... that perhaps we could all learn something from his outlook on life. After all, there is really nothing to worry about if we just keep a silly grin on our face, kill evil work gloves at every opportunity, and roll over without having to be asked (when we want our cheese). Oh yeah, a good belly rub never hurt anyone either.

Copyright ©2007 by Phil Harris