I Dream of Bushi

When we first imagined a female Pitbull to go along with our male, we "only" named her. Bushi, or "warrior" would be a perfect complement to Zen.

Despite our great hopes, in giving him his name, Zen has been a "bunctious" (rambunctious) puppy. He more clearly expresses his more formal name, Heisenberg, after the scientist. He's smarter than anyone could probably want in a dog, Smart enough to be incredibly willful and perfectly named after the Uncertainty Principle. You just never know what he'll be up to. Hint: one of his nicknames is Clepto-Puppy. As a puppy, he'd walk off with books, toilet paper, lighters, boxes of pasta from the pantry, you name it.

We put the wish out there, but we knew it wasn't time yet, and just dedicated to finding her "when the time was right." Meaning mostly when we could afford to rescue another Pitbull, and be able to pay the needed medical and shelter fees. Believe me, for a while, just feeding the family we already had was chancey.

A few weeks ago I woke up and said, "You know, I think Bushi is a mostly white dog." Now this might or might not sound silly. Up till now fate had provided us with a black (with some white trimmings) dog (Zen looks like he was born in a tuxedo), a black cat with a little "bowtie" of white (Squeaky) a black cat with smokey underfur (Raz) and three yaks, one black and two black with white markings. CK's cats were black/white except for the eldest who was grey. We had a running joke about our animals fitting the color code.

Quantum said, "I've been having the same vision. A white dog."

So a couple months went by. And one day I woke up saying, "today's the day." I got online and pulled up Petfinder. There were all of three Pitbull females listed in our area.

Okay, why a Pitbull? I've loved many dogs in my life, however every single Pit I've known has been more intelligent, loving and a better guardian than any other dog I've known. (Hey and that includes Inky, my childhood dog, a Field Spaniel who should be relegated to gods-status as Great Dog.)

On top of that, thanks to the unwarranted media nightmare, Pitbulls seem to be seen as "bad dogs".

Nevermind that it isn't true, placing a Pit Bull is harder than any other dog. We had to have a Pitty, because we had to make sure that an otherwise "unwanted" dog would find a good home.

So here we are on the day that it's "felt right" to find a Pit. Two puppies (puppies are easy to home and having lived through Zen's puppyhood, we'd promised ourselves no more puppies for a while) and one (check it out) WHITE Pittybull bitch.

"Do you think she'll feel underdressed?" asks Quantum, referring to our otherwise black-tie critters.

Underdressed? Hardly! Bushi comes to us dressed in her Ivory best. We're pretty sure she taught Lady Gaga the asymetrical makeup thing.

Just like Zen is the antitheses of his name, Bushi, our warrior princess is kind, sweet, loving, gentle as all heck.
72 hours in, today we took her to town with us, and the "pack mentality" between her and Zen and us, was comfy, safe and solid. When we got home, the two of them fell asleep head to head.

Towards evening we gave them each a beef rib bone, and wow did I get a realization. Usually Zen gnaws and plays with his bone, and a similar bone lasts for days. Bushi just plowed through her bone, and Zen, not to be outdone (or left with the only bone between two dogs) scarfed his down. The two of them chewed through their bones in less than three minutes.

Now there've been many times that Zen has grabbed me by the wrist and put a hurting on my bones. But until now I hadn't realized how much he was holding back. These rib bones were way thicker than the ones in my arms.

Later that night Something was outside the trailer. Bushi gave a deep growl. Nice to know she's feeling protective. Hoping it was a deer or elk. We've had a mountain lion sighting on the edge of our land, and the bears are certainly out of their dens by now.