So, I\nrecently returned to my digs in the Deep South after an extended visit with my\nmother-in-law. Like her daughter, my wife, she\u2019s a lifelong Chicago gal. I managed to kidnap<\/s> rescue the\ndaughter, but the MIL remains stubbornly in the land of her birth. While there, I spend a lot of time with her\nlittle dog, which where I live would be known as a \u201cfoo-foo dog.\u201d Daisy is a\nBichon Frieze, resembling a fluffy miniature poodle. She\u2019s \u201csweet sixteen\u201d in a couple of ways: a\nsweet little dog weighing sixteen pounds, and sixteen years of age. Now, that\u2019s even older than me in dog years,\nbut she has the energy of a sixteen-year-old in human years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have a\nhistory. I\u2019ve always preferred more macho dogs. I fondly remember Katana, my\nAkita, and Teddy the Great Pyrenees (actually no more than a reasonably good\nPyrenees on his best day, but he tried), and my all-time favorite canine, the\nsadly no longer with us Jeremiah Puppybeast, a 210 pound Great Dane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you might\nimagine, Daisy is a lapdog. I must confess to an identity-driven sense of\nembarrassment walking a foo-foo dog in public. Daisy just isn\u2019t the kind of dog\nthat Jack London wrote stories about. One day a few years ago I had flown in\nfrom having given a speech and was still wearing a gray suit with a pink shirt,\nor maybe it was a pink tie. It was a\nsunny day, and the only sunglasses I had with me were a pair of excellent Rudy\nProject shooting glasses, which also happened to be pink. (Why that color?\nThere\u2019s a lesson there. If you are a gun writer and a company offers you some\nof their product to try, and they ask what color you like\u2026well, it turns out\nthat the best answer isn\u2019t <\/em>\u201cSurprise me.\u201d Great glasses, though.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, my MIL\nis a very ladylike lady, so I shouldn\u2019t have been surprised that the only leash\navailable was Hot Pink. And there I was, all accoutered in pink and walking the\nfoo-foo dog through Chicagoland, looking for all the world like I was trolling\nfor gay-bashers. Fortunately, I was also carrying a loaded .45 automatic, and\nif there had been trouble, would have been able to easily establish\nself-defense with the police and the State\u2019s Attorney\u2019s Office. I was more\nworried about getting a summons from the Illinois Department of Natural\nResources for Hunting Over Bait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One day\nwhile walking Daisy I got to thinking. My MIL is proudly of Norwegian descent.\nWhy, I wondered, couldn\u2019t she have a cool dog like a Norwegian Elkhound? In\nstream of consciousness, I thought, \u201cIf an Elkhound was obviously bred to hunt\ngiant horned ungulates, and a bird dog was bred to hunt birds, what could a\nFoo-Foo Dog credibly hunt?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I got my\nanswer one day when she was off leash, and a rabbit presented itself. Faster\nthan Lon Chaney, Jr. turning into the Wolfman, Daisy launched her elderly self airborne\n<\/em>at the hapless bunny, which barely escaped with its life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nsub-compact canine had won new respect from me. Daisy Dog had turned into\nDay-Z-Dogg, Chicago street wolf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I had\nfinally discovered what a Foo-Foo Dog would instinctively hunt:<\/p>\n\n\n\n