Nelly
People assume our dog Nelly is male, which is entirely understandable, since Nelly looks like a total dude. She’s thick rather than fat, with a barrel chest and a big meaty dog butt. She swaggers when she walks. Her bark is low and gravelly, and she likes to roll in substances that will both stick to her and stink, like manure or fresh tar.
She snores and has gas that could be used as a potent biological weapon. The nicknames we’ve given her don’t help: Dog-a-Log, Dogmandu, and Nelson Mandella the Doggy Fella. There are more, but you get the point.
I went to pick her up at the groomer’s yesterday, and instead of the pink ribbon the other female dogs had around their necks, Nelly wore a bright yellow dog bone-and-lariat themed bandana, like the males.
“I tried the ribbon,” the groomer told me. “It just wasn’t working for her.”
On the drive home I thought about that. Nelly would look absurd wearing a ribbon, like Rosie O’Donnell in A League of Their Own when they put her in that chiffon dress. But were we to blame? What if we didn’t feed her so many table scraps that she now assumed the dimensions of a dorm fridge? But, no. I had to believe that this was not a lifestyle choice. It was time to accept Nelly for what she was, innately: a fat, sloppy, manly dog. I caught a glimpse of her in the rearview mirror, rooting around for crumbs in the seat. “Nice bandana,” I said, and I meant it.