My Dog
by Isaac Bloch

I have a dog. I found her when she was in a playground. She was very sweet to all of the kids. My mom decided to take her home, but she wouldn't follow us. So, my mom carried her. We stopped at a pet store to buy a leash.

At the time, my dad was in Germany and it was a good thing, too. My dad said that we would never get a dog because a dog doesn't belong in a house in the city. Dad ended up being right.

For the first couple of days, we couldn't decide what to name her. Finally, we decided to call her Maxine.

After a week's rest she was running around the house like a bullet. When she saw a bird, cat or anything small and furry she chased it. You're probably thinking that all dogs chase things, well not like my dog. She can run 25 feet in less than a second. If you catch a glimpse of her running you'll se a flash of tannish beige.

We decided to take her to a field in a nearby park to try and work some of the energy out of her. Of course, since she wasn't trained we didn't let her off the leash. People kept coming up saying what a beautiful Belgian Malinois. A Malinois is a breed of dog. My mom told these people that she as a German shepherd-street dog mix. My mom looked on the Internet to find out if Maxine was a Belgian Malinois, just in case they were right. It turned out she was. On the web, it said, "This breed of dog is not for first time owners." Since this was our first dog, this was not good news. Her previous owner had obviously trained Maxine but she needed a lot of fine-tuning.

We took her to a group class. It was very depressing. There were no windows and the lights were dimmed. There were lots of different kinds of dogs there. With Maxine's high energy she was not easily trained. After training the dog for a while, the teacher of the class gave up. She said it was impossible to train her. I partly agreed, but my mom wouldn't give up. We found a trainer who specialized in training Maxine's breed. His name was Joe. He said he didn't think there was a Belgian Malinois n Brooklyn that he didn't know about. He asked her to lay down. She immediately puled her feet out from under herself and flopped down on the ground. "Yep," said Joe, "she's a Malinois." Training was slow. Maxine didn't understand why we would want to do anything that didn't involve a ball, a field or chasing something. Slowly, she progressed.

The first time we took her to a field in a park nearby we were amazed. There were at least 50 dogs of all kinds chasing after balls and each other. Maxine was on a ten-foot leash since we didn't know if she would come when we called.

Maxine is also very territorial. She does not understand why other dogs have to walk up and down "her" block, and why they have to play in "her" park. She gets along fine with people but she doesn't like other dogs. There is only one dog Maxine likes and his name is Guy. He is a mix of her breed and something else. They chest-butt each other and chase each other.

Some of Maxine's habits are strange. When we didn't let Maxine bury her bones in the backyard she stuffed a bone in one of my dad's potted plants.

For some reason, Maxine loves my dad's bed. Whenever my dad leaves his bed, and then returns, Maxine is in his place. One time, when my dad went to bed, he reached under his pillow and there was dog food. In fact, there was dog food all over the house. Maxine must have taken the food in her mouth and put it around the house.

Truthfully, I think adopting Maxine was the best idea we ever had.

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