Gone to the Dogs

First posted October 25, 2005

Have you ever sat in a room at the veterinarian clinic and looked at one of those posters of all the different dog breeds? I have. And I have wondered, in a world of Golden Retrievers, Black Labs and an occasional poodle where are all these other types of dogs? I mean the weird ones like the wiener dog with long, coarse boar bristle type hair. Or the goofy looking white thing with black spots that doesn’t really have a head. On the end of its neck is a big snout with two eyes on the side and a mouth underneath. I don’t know the breed names. I couldn’t tell you what to call the big polar bear fur rescue dog (not the Saint Bernard). Wouldn’t know what to call the midsized long haired thing with no visible eyes that the old lady walks late at night. But I have found them all. And they are doing quite well in the Netherlands.

Cats must have it rough here. Since I do not like cats don’t take that for sympathy. In fact my favorite bumper sticker over here so far is “I like cats - they taste like chicken.” But this place is pooch central. Big dogs, little dogs. Skinny little sticks and massive things held back by a cable. Hairy Chewbacca types and dainty fluff balls. If you want to make friends here, walk a dog. The Dutch love their doggies. And they will like yours too.

But, typical for Dutch culture, we’ll have no dogs out of line. When walking in The Hague Forest one notices dogs everywhere. Almost all of them off leash being well behaved. I have always been a dog lover. And I have always enjoyed that dogs can sense who likes them and that they immediately warm up to me. But here when a pooch is on the trail in the forest twenty paces ahead of its master even if we look eye to eye and I tap my leg in an invite to a rub on the head they just saunter right by like I don’t exist. They are so well behaved they don’t even chase the ducks. That’s a little disappointing. The ducks and geese here are fat and lazy.

Our good friends, the Allmons, have a very American dog. Einstein is a poodle mix with a mind of his own. Ask him to come and he looks the other way. Ignore him and he’ll jump on your lap. Basically, he does what he wants when he wants. But he is so darn cute doing it that you can’t help but love him. In the forest one time, Einstein was on leash. He’d be dead in a minute if it were otherwise. A very Dutch woman watched him for a while. When the person walking him brought him near the lady quipped, “We have schools here for dogs like that one.”

We’re thinking of getting a pooch when things settle down. I am hoping for a Dutch-American breed, one that obeys when I want it to but is a fun rascal, too. Or maybe I’ll just train it to chase the ducks. Then when I get scolded for its misbehavior I can pretend to be appalled. But the next time your sitting at the vet’s staring at the chart, they are over here. All dogs go to Holland.