Looks

Dieter is a looker. He's always getting compliments and, somehow, it hasn't gone to his head.

This is becoming an all-the-time occurrence: Lloyd is walking Dieter and someone in a car pulls over and says "That's a gorgeous dog!" It happened just the other day again, and the man in question asked what the dog's name is. "Dieter," said Lloyd. "It means 'defender of the people' in German."

The guy blinked a little and said: "That's my middle name! I never knew what it meant."

A couple of weeks ago we were walking him up a street in our subdivision and, again, people would come out to comment on Dieter's looks. One woman asked if he was a special breed--she'd just seen a similar dog on "60 Minutes" about military dogs. We explained that Dieter's a sable German Shepherd. She'd of course seen and heard of German Shepherds, but wasn't familiar with sables. As we proceeded up the street, there were some little boys playing. As we passed by we heard one say to his pals: "I think that's a wolf."

Dieter snickered. So did we.

I look like a what?

Then this week at our second obedience class at Smack Dabs in Warrenville, as we were walking in a mom and her young son were coming out. The little boy smiled, pointed his finger at Dieter, and said: "You look like a coyote."

We all laughed, but I think the mother was mortified. How could little Bushrod be so uncouth? And will these people be insulted at what my little darling just said.

Hey, kids say what's on their mind. There are no filters, and that's kind of cool. So the wolf part I sort of get, but a coyote? That child needs a crash course in animal identification.