At A Loss For Words: A Doggie Referece Letter
Recently a good friend of ours was talking about one of her favorite subjects, her dog. Tucker, an English Black Labrador, is a nice, quiet, lovable mass of black hair and muscle, weighing in at eighty-five pounds or so. Her favorite greeting is to approach you and run the entire length of her body against your legs. My guess is Tucker is offering with this subtle "nudge,"an opportunity to give her a lengthy pat and scratch anywhere at all, as long as you wish, and she will appreciate it just the same; whether it is at her head or above her tail, or anywhere in between. But you had better act fast, as she plans to make this offer to anyone else who has arrived with you, so you will have to get in line if you miss your first opportunity.
Anyway, a friend of our friend (not the dog, our other friend), is looking for a dog, and, surprise-surprise, she is looking for a Black Labrador as well. My guess is Tucker has charmed her too with a few of those aforementioned end-to-end extended nudges that Tucker will give to just about anybody. Now, you may not have realized this, but Labrador pups are in great demand, and not just anyone can get their arms around one--and that's not because of their size, they aren't eighty to one hundred pound bundles of joy as puppies. It takes a couple of years or so to eat enough of the food you haul before one of these friends/adopted family members before the grow into that eighty to one hundred pound territory.
The dog-seeking friend was describing the trials of finding a breeder willing to even return your calls, let alone grant her the opportunity to see one of the available pups. The prices are too astounding to mention (ok, ok, I'll give you a hint--they run into the thousands of dollars--and I'm not talking about the cost of the food they will eat, the furniture they will befriend--giving the legs of your couch an occasional chew apparently is a gesture of friendship--or even the shoes of any and all household members to whom your new pup takes a "shine." Oh, not the shoes, they will likely never shine again as you, like me, probably aren't willing to spend time and energy polishing shoes that have been chewed to pieces.
As this prospective adoptive parent was describing her plight, she mentioned the name of one breeder who had not even returned her calls, and it turned out to be our friend's source for Tucker--yes the dog breeder who had blessed my friends with Tucker still raises Labrador pups, apparently needing to add a few hundred thousand dollars or so to his own retirement nest egg. On hearing this, the Labrador Puppy Parent Wannabe pleaded with our friend, asking that Tucker's "Mommy" provide a "letter of reference" for her to help her get the breeder to sell them a puppy (in case it is not obvious, she was asking Tucker's adoptive "Mommy," and not her real mother, who is apparently a tramp, making her living by giving birth to dozens of puppies; besides which she cannot hold a pen in her paws or tap keys on a keyboard worth a hoot--if she is the kind of dog who hoots--I should look that up). My friend agreed, which was why she was telling us the story. She was asking for our help. As I am sure if you have ever been asked to write a letter of reference for someone attempting to undertake a career, for example, you might have struggled for the right things to say, composing this letter of reference had indeed left her at a loss for words.
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