Girl ended up being Dad's dog. She was dumped on our property along with her sister - unwanted mutts. Dad ended up naming both of them. We already had a dog - Mompst - and we expected to give away or re-home these two pups abandoned in our horse field. Because we weren't keeping these dogs, us kids declined to name them. Dad called one of them "Girl" and the other one "Jen" - short for "Generic." He thought he was hilarious.
Dad shows us Girl's bag of tricks in 2006
Dad told the story best - that one of my cousins came running into the house - "uncle Roderick, there is an animal under the barn with BIG EYES!" Thinking it was some sort of predator, dad went marching up with a head full of steam - and ended up pulling out two scared balls of puppy fur instead.
Girl was probably the least awesome dog we ever had. She was a total coward, and yet would gang up on other dogs given half the chance. When she was spayed, the vet allegedly said she had the "thinnest abdominal muscle wall" he'd ever seen in his life - something dad was proud of! In other words, she was close to a literal sausage with legs.
For some reason when we moved and kept 1 dog, Dad chose to keep Girl over Jen. Jen had far more Joie de vivre, but Dad claimed that she was too energetic for the town we were moving to. He thought Girl, with her super lazy temperament, would be a better fit.
I actually think that Dad chose Girl because she was so imperfect and he felt some kinship with her, some sort of understanding. She was incredibly quirky, and he enjoyed that. Girl would walk on fences like a cat - the only Dog I know that did this often - and Girl would delight in walking the fence and torturing the neighbour's dogs by perfectly walking the line. I remember the neighbour calling - "uh, did you know your dog is, uh, on... the fence?" That just tickled my dad pink.
Her other quirks Dad loved included sleeping in the bonnet of his old Volkswagen car - he liked to surprise people by popping the hood of his car, and instead of an engine a dog would pop up and the unsuspecting stranger would leap backward and maybe even yelp (it was a rear-engine car).
With Girl, Dad gave up his domineering ways with animals and he just loved her for what she was - a lazy, sometimes sour tempered, very quirky, scared-of-fire-hydrants dog. One of the highlights of Dad's life was writing a story of Girl and having it read on-air on the CBC. It was one of his favourite party stories about Girl, and if you know Dad, you probably heard that one.
Today I was looking through some old video clips with my son and found this one of Dad and Girl. Dad had come up to visit and brought Girl in the back of his Nissan truck. She was very old at this point.