The Ballad of John Henry

S. was a cat person; I have never cared for anything larger than a hamster, yet here we were, at the back end of 2015, in an animal-rescue shelter, looking to adopt/rescue a dog.

I may have foolishly said at one point in our pre-search that pugs were weird looking, and I would never have one. Now, in front of us, was a kinda-sorta-pug that the shelter manager said checked all our carefully chosen boxes.

• Small
• Lazy
• Likes to be cuddled

This little pup was brindled; they guessed he was maybe three years old, and weirdly delightful-looking. The big-eyed little guy in the cage must have known we were coming. He started his mind games immediately.

Small? Clearly. Lazy? Sure – he wandered slowly around the fence of the enclosure we took him to; he couldn't jump up to my wife's lap; he looked confused and a little sorry for us as we threw things for him to retrieve; he went to stretch out away from the sun and near to the water bowl. This was clearly one lazy dog.

As S. held him, he gratefully leaned in and licked off the top layer of skin from her cheek. More or less.

We signed up, then and there. He needed his little-boy-dog surgery, and everything was delayed for the Christmas holidays, so we weren’t able to take him home until January 2, 2016.

And that was when his clever deceptions became clear. In fact, our tiny beast could outrun large, angry dogs at the dog park. He could leap up onto our bed whenever he felt like it. He enjoyed long games of tug o' war and fetch. He climbed fences like a goat climbs sheer cliffs.

The devious bug-eyed fur ball played us like the naive, pet-free simpletons we were.

Naming a pet is a frivolous and fun act – it also makes a great party game for those of us who aren't very good at games (or parties). We had an inexhaustible supply of cool/fun/wise/ridiculous dog names when we started looking for our newest family member, while also understanding that a rescue dog comes with a name. And how unfair would it be to suddenly drop a little mutt into a new home and then start calling him by a new name that he has no way of knowing is his?

So, we came face-to-squashed-pug-face with the dog that most ideally matched our over-entitled middle-class pet-owning needs, and once we quickly decided This Is The One, we had to answer the simple question.

"What's his name?" S. asked.

"Sergeant Johnny," said the shelter manager.

Um, no. No, it's not.

While it's fun to imagine wacky names for our pets, they all have to pass what I think of as the Porch Test (the same applies to naming children, by the way). Could you stand on the porch at the end of a long day and call in your little one using the name you came up with?

Sergeant Johnny did not pass the Porch Test.

We needed something that wasn't going to confuse the tiny fluffball's tiny brain, so something that was similar to Sergeant Johnny. Something that shared elements of Sergeant Johnny. But something that was not Sergeant Johnny. As is so often the case in life, the Bruce Springsteen back catalogue came to our rescue in a moment of inspiration: John Henry. It shares the "John" element of his old name from his old life, but our new version passes the Porch Test.

We needed a back story (yes, I'm afraid we really did), so we decided that Sergeant Johnny had left behind his life in the armed forces and returned home to start missionary work, bringing peace to the lives of the needy. Thus, his formal title is The Reverend John Henry. Known as "The Rev", "John Henry", or simply "JH".
Also, over time, in the way of things, we call him all kinds of ridiculous names. But as long as we keep feeding him, he allows it.

S. especially likes to tell people about his storied history – and we get some interesting reactions. The best being from his groomer, who nodded as the story was told and then commented that they get a lot of ex-service dogs coming through for bathing and whatnot. Never for one moment wondering why the army would need a handbag-sized, devil-faced lick machine.

Getting a dog would improve my fitness, I told myself – and there may indeed be health benefits from the two-step stroll from one bush to the next that constituted my three-times-daily constitutional. John Henry is active in small and intense bursts – which usually start with him sniffing another dog's bottom to get them to notice and then chase him – but mostly he's a low-intensity aficionado of plants and the messages other dogs leave thereon.

If not a replacement for a gym, then, having a dog was a good way of breaking the ice with our fellow dog walkers around the neighborhood. That was the theory. But, in no time at all, I knew the names of the neighbors' dogs without ever learning the names of the humans that walked them around: Lord Winston, Shakespeare, Astro, Jackson, Ripley. A teenager in a sports vest and a backwards baseball cap stopped to stroke JH and tell me that "he's so pretty". An older guy told me that my dog looks just like his first childhood pet.

"The one you grow up with, spend all your time with, and then he dies." I was learning that all dogs can be therapy dogs in the right circumstances.

My favorite dog neighbor was an anonymous tiny-tiny Yorkshire terrier, full of fight whenever he saw another dog. This animal, no bigger than a New York rat, was afraid of nothing and no one. As his human dragged him away from his first attempt to savage me and JH, she apologized profusely.

"He's just so full of hate," she whispered.

Our little fur machine introduced me to a world I had no idea existed. Whether it's deciding exactly when we go for a walk, how and where we eat, or who sleeps where at bedtime, he put himself completely in charge, and we happily rolled with it. This was a problem only if he realized how much power he had. So far, after seven or so years, and five other dogs, he still thinks he's bottom of the pack. May the gods help us all if he ever realizes his real place in our family hierarchy.