Timmahhhhh......

Timmy is at the doggie beauty parlor this morning, being "coiffed." He gets his hair cut more often than I do, and it's more expensive! But like the lovelies in the L'Oreal commercials, he's definitely worth it. It's awfully quiet without him in the house; the cats are basking in the calmness and safety of his absence, and Pancho, for this brief moment in time, is The Alpha Dog.

People think I named him after South Park's Timmy (prounounced "Timmahhhh," using a voice like the Budweiser "Wassup" guys--a little hard to explain if you haven't seen it), the paralyzed kid confined to a wheelchair who is unbelievably cool, in spite of his disabilities and the fact that his own name, "Timmahhh," is the only word he can say. And that's ok, it's fun when people ask his name and I say "Timmy," and they respond with "Timmahhhh," then we both say "Timmmahhh," and it's like a little inside joke that makes me feel kind of cool, too, for giving a dog such a clever name. But that's not the real reason for his name.....

I'd had a pug named Fred since he was a puppy; he was almost 8 (not that old), and he'd been like a sick child all his life with various health problems, the curse of the "puppy mill" dog. His last malady was an apparent inner ear infection, causing him to run around in circles, lose his balance, etc. He seemed to be responding pretty well to the treatment for that, but he woke up sicker than usual one morning (didn't want food, no energy at all). I went off to work anyway and made arrangements to leave early because I planned to take him to the vet as soon as I got home.

When I got home, he had died. Hours earlier. When I left for work that morning, I had a dog. When I got home, I found this thing on the kitchen floor, this awful, dead, thing. I kept circling around him, not wanting to touch him, not quite believing that this happened, that he was really THAT sick. That he was really dead. I called the vet, and they said I should put him in a trash bag and bring him in. A TRASH BAG? How could I take my Fred to the vet in a trash bag? But I did what they said, then I stuffed that into a gym bag, with some difficulty, and hopefully no one knew I had my dead dog in it, the dog that died because I was a crummy parent.

The next day, I went to work but was pretty useless...the following day began my "summer vacation." Not only was I devastated at the unexpected loss, but I was feeling a lot of guilt over going off to work and leaving him, not realizing how sick he really was. I was even more guilty because waited way too long to take him to the vet in the first place, so I felt responsible AND guilty. A pretty heavy load.

I had a doctor's appointment up in Clearwater that first day of my vacation, June 30. I stopped at the SPCA on my return trip, since it was on the way, "just to look." The SPCA, had only one smallish dog up for grabs, a cocker-poodle mix called a cockapoo. He was a handsome but frou frou-y fellow with white curly hair, reminiscent of a muppet. He seemed to have a friendly disposition, we went outside to the play area and he ran around a little bit, behaving very noncomittally, as was I, because I really just wanted my Fred back. Of course the price was right, and I knew if I left to think about it, he'd be gone when I got back. And, if it didn't work out, I could "return" him. So, without a whole lot of conviction, but knowing it wasn't an un-doable decision, I adopted him on the spot, deciding that I wasn't ready for another pug anyway.

I spent the next couple of days trying to decide what to name him. He came with a name, "Beji," which turned out to be a typo for "Benji." I didn't like it with or without the "n." I ran through all of the cool names I could think of: Spike, Chester, Max, Fozzie, Oscar (the cat's name is Felix), Zippy, Einstein, Scooter, even Timmy (the South Park Timmy), but nothing seemed quite right.

Finally, sitting in the back yard one afternoon, I was pretty much down to "Spike" because of my weird sense of humor, or "Fozzie" because of his muppet look. Then, out of nowhere, I found myself thinking about a friend of mine that had died sometime the previous year. An old bartender friend named Tim who had moved up north a few years earlier and ended up dying of liver failure. He was a good natured heavy drinking Irishman who apparently drank himself to death.

Tim had the same color hair as the dog. White-white. I thought what a nice tribute it would be to Tim's memory if I named this dog after him. So then (and here comes the weird part) I went to the archives of the local paper and looked up his obituary. While I was waiting for the page to load, I got this weird, pee-shiver kind of feeling. There was going to be something freaky about this, I just knew it. The obituary finally appeared, and there it was. He had died on June 30 of the previous year (2005), ON THE SAME DATE I got this dog.

He was Timmy from that moment on, and (I swear I'm not making this up) he responded to the name from the first time I uttered it. Some things just have no explanation other than synchronicity, and this is one of them. This frou-frou muppet dog was sent to me.

There is another pug now, but that's another story....