Dakota: The Doberman's Tale (Abridged*)

Like Clyde, Dakota is an Azalea Park regular and long-time pal of St.Ella. Dakota (the Territory i.e. transcending the North-South divide) had a hard time keeping a good home in his first two years of life. Dakota's original owner had to give him up after she became seriously ill and could no longer care for him or her other dogs. Dakota's next owner already had his hands full with a couple of full-grown Great Danes who muscled the Doberman puppy aside at meal time. The owner of one of Dakota's litter-mates retrieved the underfed and under-sized Dakota and nourished him back to good health. Dakota was then sold to someone who wanted a companion for her Boxer. While Dakota was by then mature enough to have the run of the house, the Boxer still needed to be kept in a cage during the day. Consequently, neither dog was content with this arrangement: it was unfair to the Boxer to keep it caged while Dakota roamed free, while it was just as unfair to keep Dakota in a cage when he had already demonstrated that this was no longer necessary in his case. After four owners in two years (!), Dakota was put up for sale yet again.

The fifth time proved to be the charm for Dakota. In the spring of 1995, a first year UVA graduate student was so impressed with a friend's Doberman (named Banjo), he decided to check out a two year old Doberman being put up for adoption. "I was a little dubious at first because I had grown up next to a genuine `junkyard-dog' Doberman," recalled Dakota's Significant Human Other (SHO), "but I liked Banjo a lot so I went to check out this dog." Dakota, being a smart fellow, knew the Best Available Human had arrived. "He immediately came up to me and lay down so I could scratch his stomach, and I was sold." As a full-grown and extremely well-conditioned Doberman, Dakota can seem quite intimidating; appearances, however, can be deceiving. "He's the sweetest dog when he's in the house," reports Dakota's SHO. "His life is driven by the need to seek affection from the nearest human, and he will contort himself into the oddest positions in order to get the maximum possible square footage of his body next to a person."

Although Dakota has been "living large" with his SHO for four years now, the experience of going through four owners in his first two years has left its traces. Dakota apparently has a large dose of "separation anxiety", which often causes him to howl when his SHO has to leave to go to classes. Dakota will also howl once in a while if he's in a room alone and he hears the phone ring several times without being picked up -- perhaps because this audio "cue" reminds him of being alone (this happens even when Dakota's SHO is in the house at the time), or perhaps because he objects to the practice of screening phone calls and/or the widespread use of answering machines.

*"Abridged" -- get it? ha ha

Just the Facts:	Dakota is a neutered male purebred Doberman Pinscher born "somewhere in the Valley" in 1993. He weighs approximately 65-70 lbs. We would like to point out that the elongated protruberance depicted in the photograph below is Dakota's actual tongue and not, as many have supposed, a prosthetic device.
Turn-ons:	(1) Playing "full body contact" fetch (tennis balls being the preferred medium); (2) Greta the Rottweiler.
Turn-offs:	Other dogs interfering in his "personal space" when he's absorbed in a good game of fetch. Like his Significant Human Other (SHO), Dakota is suspicious of new people (or dogs in his case) who are too friendly too fast; just like Andy unlike his SHO, he's inclined to nip them in the ear.
Highest Elevation Achieved:	(1) Literally: 14,000+ ft. on Mount of the Holy Cross, near Vail, Colorado; (2) Figuratively: Being named "Dog of the Month" for March 1999 on this Website, of course.
Evidence of Possible Alien Abduction:	Photographic x-rays have shown "a small square solid object" of unknown origin embedded deep in Dakota's neck (we're not kidding). Every time he goes through the checkout line at Kroger, the cashier has to call for a price check.
Actual Foreign Objects Extracted by Vets from Dakota's Body:	(1) a bottlecap (now on display at the local Emergency VETS); (2) two-inch long wooden splinter. Dakota has nine inches of scars on his chest and stomach as a reminder of the two surgeries required to remove these items.

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