‘All This Goofy Pooch Wanted Was to Be Loved’

They say you don’t get to pick your family. Sometimes, you don’t even get to pick your pets.

We’d always thought of ourselves as a one-dog household. And then, last summer, that changed. Our only defense is that it was very hot and we weren’t thinking clearly.

Kermit came to us the way many dogs come to those who work at The Times--through the good intentions of staff writer Patt Morrison. She lives in a part of town where--I gather from her incessant appeals on behalf of four-legged foundlings--abandoned canines roam the avenues in packs, looking for suckers with big hearts. They always seem to end up on her porch.

Ms. Morrison had heard we already owned a Boston terrier and wondered if we might be able to find a home for another.

At the time, I was eight months pregnant, and ready to do what I could for puppies and panhandlers. I assured her we could help.

All this goofy little pooch wanted was to be loved.

*

You don’t see many Boston terriers around these days. Small black-and-white dogs, they are cursed with short, bulldog-ish snouts and bat ears. They have bulging eyes and stumpy little tails that look like some sort of evolutionary afterthought. They have delicate stomachs, and all that implies. And thanks to their squashed noses, they suffer from an affliction called “inverted sneezing,” which causes them simultaneously to suck air and bray like donkeys. When this happens, they appear to be in danger of imploding.

Bostons were one of the first indigenous American breeds. Their heyday, during the ‘30s and ‘40s, overlapped with the Art Deco period, when the combination of black-and-white was fashionable, in homes as well as hounds.

Now the breed is a curiosity. When we walk our dogs, younger people point and laugh, while their elders point, laugh and often remark that they had one of those things when they were growing up.

*

I met Kermit in a vet’s office, where he’d been taken for shots. The assistants there had christened him and it was easy to see why. Kermit’s bulging eyes are a worst-case scenario. They are widely spaced, wander and one is cloudy. He looks eternally startled and / or demented.

On the ride home, he curled into a tiny ball on the floor in the back seat and went to sleep. He seemed to be trying to make himself invisible.

The only clue that he was there were a few odoriferous emissions wafting into the front seat. Nerves and an unfamiliar diet, I thought. This will change as soon as he starts a new alimentary regime.

Kermit was happy to be with us, although I kept reminding him that we were just a way station on his way to a real home. We thought our frisky little Boston, Perry Violet, would enjoy a playmate, because her place of honor in the house was about to be usurped by a baby. But Kermit was not interested in playing with Perry. He wanted to curl up in our laps, all 23 pounds of him. He wanted to sleep on our bed pillows and bark at people walking past our house. He wanted to tear up the lawn and chew on other dogs.

And those aren’t even his flaws.

His breath smells exactly like corn tortillas. He pretends to want to fetch, but really only wants to play tug of war. He and Perry Violet engage in vicious pulling matches over everything: rawhide bones, our socks, even tennis balls. I keep the baby out of their way. The jangle of car keys drives him into paroxysms of anticipation and inspires a kind of canine chirping that sounds like he’s doing his scales after too many amphetamines.

If Kermit wants a pat, he paws at your arm with Howard Hughes-like toenails. If you touch him in just the wrong spot behind the ears, he shrieks as though his throat is being slit. And, of course, there is the small odor problem.

No one likes him very much.

And yet, he is endearing. Perry Violet likes to sleep the morning away, but Kermit rises with us and follows us around the house hoping for a scratch, or even a kind word, for which he is embarrassingly grateful. He slinks into our laps as we read the morning paper and tries to make himself tiny.

Except for his eye problems, he’s actually quite handsome, with a perfect white stripe down the middle of his boxy face.

I began to feel a reluctant affection for Kermit.

*

One day, as I walked him at the beach, we crossed paths with a 50-ish woman walking another Boston. I mentioned that we were trying to find a home for Kermit. She thought he would be perfect for her father in Pennsylvania, who had owned many a Boston terrier and was quite familiar with the breed’s idiosyncrasies.

She would propose the idea to her father that evening. She knew he’d be thrilled to live out his days with such a fine specimen. We swapped numbers and she vowed to call the next evening.

Our Kermit problems were over.

We pulled up to the house. He chirped insanely until I let him out of the car. He bounded ahead of me and raced through the doggy door to announce that we were home.

I walked in and felt sick with guilt and remorse. How could we give him away? But I’d promised. And he would make the old man so happy. Maybe Kermit would even like the snow.

Days passed. She never called.

I think she came to her senses.

And I think Kermit brought us to ours. Corn tortilla breath sort of grows on you.