Bubbadawg

If you’re a regular Bookwormom reader you might remember me mentioning a new contributor to the chaos that is life here in Bookwormom Central. He’s about a year and a half old, which we’re told is a teenager in dogdom. Dunno about that last one, I read it somewhere. The inmates are now as follows: three teenagers (two humans and one dog), one Husband and one college student. Plus me. I’m probably the craziest of them all, truth be told.

Anyhow, I’m in a kind of reviewing dead zone right now. I’m in the middle of two rather large books & I read slowly. So I thought I’d discuss our newest family member. The last dog we loved lived with us for nine years. Sophie was a sheltie mix rescue dog. We loved her so much, there are so many cute stories I could tell you. But as is common she eventually reached a point where we had to be merciful and put her to sleep to end her suffering. After that it took us several years before we were willing to look for another family friend.

Our new friend’s name is either Sammy, the name he arrived with, or Bubba, the name we’ve christened him. After doing some brief searching we discovered that Bubba is probably an English Coonhound. A red tick coonhound. According to what I’ve read coonhounds are descendants of English hunting dogs. Anyhow, English Coonhounds are an American breed, common in areas where there’s a lot of hunting. As in- not here in suburbia. Anyhow, since coonhounds are a southern breed we wanted to give him a regional name. Thus: Bubba. Not that he answers to it, mind you.

He’s kind of freckled with white and copper in coin sized patches all over. Sort of like someone let him roll in cinnamon sugar & then turned it all into fur. His ears and head are mostly the copper color with a little splotch of white in the middle of his head. His fur is short and thick and coarse. He waves his tail in big round circles straight over his back. He looks like he’s a helicopter when he’s excited.

Just lately we’ve started calling him Cagney, after the famous actor who made gangsters famous. Remember how Cagney would sneer/snarl/curl his lip? I swear the dog wrinkles his upper lip on one side just like Cagney did. Honest.
How Bubba ended up here in suburbia is a long story. Ten days before Christmas we drove out to a rescue event looking for a dog to adopt. I asked one of the foster families which dog was the friendliest and was immediately handed Bubba’s leash. Hubby was with me and we hung out & chatted and were interviewed, etc.

Finally we pieced together his story. Bubba was found along a roadside out in Bristol VA (extreme opposite corner of the state, near TN; very rural area) as a small puppy. Someone rescued him and paired him with a family who kept him in an outdoor kennel with a large number of other dogs. He was there for quite a while before he was passed along to another foster family who kept lots of dogs in an outdoor kennel. This person drove a truck full of foster dogs way up here from Bristol to try and find these dogs homes. He needed another foster family to take him or for Bubba to be adopted out. His kennels were crowded & he needed to thin out the dogs if he could. Hubby’s theory is that Bubba was going to be someone’s hunting dog and was either separated from his owner while hunting or he escaped from a home or a pen.

There we were. Interested, but not thinking we’d take a dog home that day. For various reasons we were asked to take Bubba home on a trial basis as a foster family planning to become his permanent family once the papers and visits were finalized. We were handed his leash and his papers and here we are two months later. Bubba is ours.

He fits in pretty well. We had to housebreak him- kennel dogs not needing housebreaking. I have to say, though, that he’s a quick learner when he wants to be. LOL  Hotdogs being a great motivator! Other than being housebroken he has very little manners training. Many of the behaviors you see in young puppies have started showing up in him, we assume that’s because he spent so much time kenneled & away from people. He’s fun and energetic, even when we walk him on our usual three mile loop he’s raring to go a short time later. Bubba seems to be a man’s dog: he goes crazy when Hubby or Pianist comes home, but less so for Anime Queen or me. He’ll cuddle with the Hubster, but not with the ladies.

We’re working on the manners. It’ll be a long struggle I think. He’s stubborn & willing to take a couple of miles if you give him an inch. We love him though & don’t want to go back to a quiet dogfree house.