A shadow of himself

This time of year, Bern cuts on our dog's hair.

Mostly she does it outside on the deck, but some of it happens on 'the little bed' in our TV room upstairs.

She cuts him and cuts him and he ends up a shadow of himself.

He still weighs a sturdy 50 some pounds, but in his summer cut he looks much smaller.

Pulis really have a lot of hair. If we let it grow it would cord and he'd look like the dog in the wonderful Dr. Pepper commercial--I hope you've seen it.

We let him cord once and all of us--Bern, Bela and Me--hated it,

There is enough Puli hair swept off our porch and deck to make another Puli.

But he likes it. Summer is hard on a dog that would, if we let him, lay in the snow for hours.

They come, finally from Mongolia. Attila the Hun brought them as he raped and pillaged his way all the way to Hungary--where one half (her mother's side) of Bern's family came from. The Baccho's would have loved our dog...the national dog of Hungary, all the way from Asia and now in Connecticut.

What a journey. We had a Puli when we were much younger and Bern's parents would keep him (his name was Templomkerti Palac Suba and he was born in Hungary and we called him Finney. Bern's parents, her mother especially, being Hungarian, loved him so.

Bela, our current Puli, was born in Syracuse and is not as smart as Finney and more aggressive to strangers.

He is a bad dog.

Someone recently, when I was walking him, asked me if he was a Portuguese Water dog--smaller and shorter, he is--and I said, "no, he's a BAD dog."

And we love him so.

Go figure.