Shane and I were still living with Sharon, Shane’s mom, when she got these two adorable Shitzu babies, Dudley and Sheldon. They are brothers; the one with the spots is Dudley and the all black, smaller baby, is Sheldon. They are these sweet little playful things with all this affection and amazing personalities – just loveable - and bringing so much happiness to Sharon. Not long after though, Shane and I moved into our own apartment. We weren’t moved in but two weeks before we found ourselves at Buster and Friends, a shelter in Houston that rescues dogs from the pound (from being euthanized) and gives them a better shot at being adopted.
We were trying to decide who to adopt, and totally fell in love with this one dog but I was upset because he wouldn’t kiss me. I told Shane that I didn’t think we could adopt a dog that won’t kiss me. We literally spent four hours at the shelter that day, like we should have had name tags on because we walked every dog. In the final deciding moment (shane had been sooo patient but it was getting to be dinner time) it was between this one dog we really liked but wouldn’t kiss and this other cool dog. I went over to the boy’s cage and explained that I couldn’t take him if he wasn’t going to kiss, the message apparentely got through because he landed a wet one on my arm. He won us over right away but he drove it home, literally, with the kiss. So we made him family and gave him the name ”Beso”, which is ”kiss” in Spanish. Of course we’d give our dog a Spanish name.
Click here to see more pics!
We didn’t know his breed and he doesn’t really look like anything obvious, so we just accepted that he is this interesting mix of great things. We’ve been taking him to the dog park for his social time and exercise, and he gets so much attention because he is so sweet and handsome but also because people are always trying to figure out what kind of dog he is – because he’s such an unusual and cool dog. We thought we had heard it all but then last weekend this couple told us with absolute certainty, like not even in a suggestive but informative manner, that he is a Canaan breed. It would have been like so many other times – someone tells us he’s some breed we’ve never heard of before, but this time, when we went home to look it up – there was his picture, and the description totally fit! So, the Canaan breed, or kelev k’naani - in Hebrew, is the national breed of Israel and dates back to like 2200 BC. Really interesting and fun discovery, of course we can’t prove it for sure – not about to do genetic testing – but it looks right and sounds good to us.
My grandmother has since given him the middle name, Avram, so he is officially Beso Avram. She felt he really should have a Hebrew middle name, given all the Jewish ancestory. She and my grandfather discussed it futher and decided he should be named after my grandfather’s dad, Abraham, and Avram is the Hebrew name for Abraham. We can’t think of a better middle name, so thank you Grandma!
To learn more about Beso Avram’s most likely breed and ancestory check out: http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/canaan.htm or http://cdca.org/what.html or of course just search image results on google and you’ll see what we’re talking about.
Most enjoyable will however be the actual pics of Beso and Beso with his adorable uncles (the pups dudley and sheldon)….
