This year's

winner in the 124th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog

Show was a fluffy English springer spaniel named

Shameless.

She has

good teeth, excellent breeding and impeccable behavior.

But can she dance? My dog Nick can.

Somehow I

can't picture that prissy pup kicking up her paws to the

disco beat of "Everybody Dance Now... da, dada, da,

da." Thanks to intense instruction from my daughter,

Nick has been boogying down since his puppy days. Now his

paws reach my shoulder blades.

I've always

been a "dog person" as opposed to a "cat

person." Dogs have personalities and are faithful

companions. Cats are snooty and fickle.

When I

first moved to Georgia and rented a house that came with

an oversized dog house, my two boys immediately felt the

need to fill it. Well, they liked playing in it all

right, but eventually the younger son grew tired of

always being the one to fetch the ball. Enter Frisky, a

jet black mixed breed, part dachshund and part beagle

with the IQ of a flea.

She is an

avid barker, squirrel chaser and, after nine years, is

still learning to sit and heel. Her advancing age has

forced me to cease all attempts at house breaking and we

may go in for Doggie Depends eventually.

Her one and

only trick is answering the call, "Car dog!"

Frisky leaps off the front porch and jumps into the back

seat of the car with the grace of a much younger lady.

There she sits and chews on her rump. Yes, she's quite a

specimen.

The boys

had the fun of raising a puppy, but my daughter felt

deprived. She never had a cute, furry canine to cuddle

with. By the time she came along, Frisky was, well,

mature.

The top

item on her 1998 Christmas list was a puppy. Surely she

wanted a nice stuffed animal. Nope. Nothing would do

except the real, living, breathing, eating pooping,

slobbering thing. Enter Nick.

A few days

before Christmas, we find ourselves outside K-Mart where

a drama queen home from college is pleading with shoppers

to adopt one of the shivering, worm-ridden pups she has

tucked in a box. "Oh, please mommy? Please,

please?"

We go up

and down the aisles in K-mart until closing. "All

those puppies must be gone by now," I think. As we

exit the store, there she is,the puppy broker, with one

loner left in the box. Her parting words still ring in my

ears, "Oh, he won't be big. I think he's part lab

and part pointer."

Right. Nick

weighs about 45 pounds now, and can look me in the eye

when he's standing on his hind legs. In about a year, he

has chewed up five pairs of shoes, four books,

hairbrushes, foil wrap, etc. Dirty socks are his favorite

snack, but being the thoughtful dog he is, Nick always

gives them back, in one form or another.

When we'd

had him for about a week, my daughter thought he was

magical, kind of like the goose that laid the golden egg.

"Look, mommy!" She pointed to a green sparkly

arrangement on the grass. We later discovered the source

was the remains of some green glitter crayons Nick had

digested for artistic purposes.

So,

Shameless, you may be Best in Show, but I bet you can't

poop sparkles. Long live the mutts of the world.

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