OK, so someone — I can’t remember who — posted this on their blog:

And I couldn’t get the song out of my head. So, like the dork I am, I researched and found the original video:

(more…)

When I brought Quigley — an Australian Cattle Dog — home all those years ago, he was an only dog. Oh, he had a cat brother or two through the years, but no other dogs. And he was my shadow — everywhere I went, he had to go — even into the bathroom. He was my buddy, so that’s what I would call him — Buddy (or Buddy-Boy). He’d answer to it like he would his own name. I’d even sing “My Buddy” to him.

Then I brought Cora — also an Australian Cattle Dog — home a year and a half ago. My instinct was to call her Buddy since that’s what I called the only dog I’d had in my house for years. But every time I did, Quigley would look up with this expectant look on his face. I could just hear him, “Whatdoyouwantmetodo? ShouldIbringthetoy? Ormaybetherope?” Excuse the run-on sentences, he’s a cattle dog and that’s the only way they express themselves. Anyway, I digress. Back to Cora. I began to call her Miss Thing and sometimes just Thing. And now she answers to that as well.

One month ago, I brought home a new puppy. This one’s a mix of Boxer and Chocolate Lab. He looks Lab all the way. I’m not sure personality-wise as I’ve never had a Boxer before, but he seems Lab-like in personality, too. After living with him for two weeks, getting to know him, we named him Joxer (the Mighty). But that still left that other endearment. I’d call him Buddy by accident, sometimes even Thing. All that got me was dirty looks from the other two. I’d sit outside and watch him play with Quigley and Cora, and it was pretty obvious that he was low man on the totem pole. The bottom of the pecking order. And he didn’t care. He’d accept whatever correction they gave him and bound right back in to play.

And it came to me, a merging of two different ideas — we live in southern California, the land of Dude. And Adam’s favorite show is the Simpson’s, in which the easygoing (and probably stoned) bus driver Otto Mann always calls Bart “Little Dude”. And Joxer has now been christened. My Little Dude.