a dog’s life

After Mary Lou and I took home our miniature schnauzer puppy in the summer of 2008, we knew we had struck gold.

He was energetic and grew into a fine adult dog but something was missing. His collar held only his rabies vaccination tag.

One auspicious morning on the internet I stumbled across a silver 2 reales coin from 1743 with the motto, Utraque Uno (Both are One) with the Pillars of Hercules on one side and the a cartouche with the symbols of Aragon and Castile on the other.

A previous owner had adored it to the extent that a hole was drilled through the top. This dropped it into my affordability range.

The option was clear. Attach it to Rhett’s collar and there it remains to this day shining every year since its glorious birth in Mexico City so many years earlier.

Rhett pranced around our garden in joy. He could have been trying to shake it off.

All was well until the day I saw a silver-plated medal with a profile of Napoleon. My research found that this medal was issued to Dutch soldiers in Napoleon’s army. It, too, could be attached to Rhett’s collar making him an honorary Napoleonic dog.

Problems began when I slipped it on Rhett. His manner took a turn for the worse. He growled more often and scraped his head and side along our fence.

One day, he had joy in his eyes. The Dutch medal gone. He had scraped it off.

To me it was lost forever. Several weeks ago, I found it by my car in the dirt.

Without a second to lose I reattached it to his collar. Again, Rhett ran off this time yelping as he brushed against anything nearby. A day later it was gone.

A few weeks later I found it and used strong wire to attach it and heard a small still voice in another language.

I could understand him but the telepathic language sounded Germanic. I added a new app (Audio Translate Made Easy) that can translate spoken word into English. I waited until I heard what sounded like Rhett trying to communicate, spoke what I had heard into my smart phone and this is what appeared on the screen.

“I am a schnauzer, a German breed. Please take Napoleon off my collar. Germans and French do not get along that well and neither do their dogs.”

Now, the medal without its silver plating and somewhat dented is back in my armoire. Rhett is so much more like his former self, no longer a Napoleonic dog.

He is much more content being an American schnauzer as you see below.