Had you told me, pre-Uno, that I’d be negotiating our gritty San Francisco neighborhood at 4:30 a.m. on a regular basis, I’d have scoffed. Yet there we were: Uno’s prancing reindeer gait in odd contrast to the dim shadows, discarded food wrappers, and shards of glass littering the sidewalks. (For the record, we do have our limits; we’ve trained him to stay in his bed until a more forgiving hour.)
More than just dog-crazy?
Inevitably, it wasn’t long before Mike and I became a bit lax in observing our self-imposed rules. Mike found himself telling Uno to make a big poop for Mommy at the park. And I found a loophole in the answering machine rule: “Leave a message for Leslie or Mike. Uno momento.”
It didn’t stop there. I became fixated on finding out more about Uno. We’d never know how or why he ended up at the shelter, but I had heard about a way to get us some answers about his breed makeup. So, in an act that tested the limits of even our most tolerant friends, Mike and I sunk seventy bucks into DNA testing.
My friend Beth was visiting from Kansas when we got the results. I opened the envelope, and grabbed her hand.
Then, slowly, I read the answer out loud: Uno is roughly half Doberman Pinscher. Even more surprising, there’s not an ounce of Labrador or Pointer in him!
It was as if one of the world’s great mysteries had been made known to me, and I spent a good thirty seconds letting the word Doberman roll off my lips. “I need to get to the internet,” I said. “I need to research Dobermans.”
Beth let go my hand, and allowed me to whiz past her toward the computer. But when I caught her eye, I could tell she thought I’d finally snapped.
By anyone’s standards, Beth lives well within societal norms. She attends church regularly, goes to the gym when she can, and sends her kids to public schools. She takes my love for Uno seriously—after all, she’s been my best friend since seventh grade—but somehow I think she equates my fussing and mothering to a child playing house.
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