The Lionhound

Most people, hearing the word poodle, think of the smaller miniature poodle and even smaller toy poodle. The standard poodle is a much bigger dog, weighing from 50-90 pounds. There is also a so-called giant poodle, even bigger, but this is not a separate breed, just a subset of freakishly big (and unhealthy) standards.

Poodles are one of the most identifiable breeds, having numerous features everyone knows on sight: the curly coat, longer than normal legs, floppy ears, long face, black eyes, tremendous white teeth, and excellent nose. But most especially, there is the haircut.

Tradition says the poodle was bred in Denmark or Germany over a thousand years ago -- making it a very ancient breed -- to be a retriever. Its ancestors may have included the French barbet and the Portuguese water dog. Its Latin name is familiaris aquatius.

The idea was that the curly coat would keep the dog warm in icy water. The dog proved a good retriever, but in spite of its coat, not because of it. Its coat was so thick, and matted and intermeshed so intricately, that it held water to the dog instead of repelling it the way a Labrador's does. Being in the water thus had the effect of weighing the dog down and icing him up.

Another tradition - possibly an apocryphal one - holds that poodles were bred to be hunters. The famous "poodle cut," with the balls of fur on top of its head, around its neck and cuffs, and a ball at the tail, is actually a lion cut.

What the lion cut means has been interpreted several ways. One is that poodles were once bred to hunt lions. Possibly in India. Probably not in Denmark.

The other interpretation is that they were cut this way to assist them in battle. Any bear, wolf, or other dog that sank its teeth into these areas would get only fur and no muscle.

Wolves and bears disappeared from Europe. But the poodle hung on. It was put to work doing other things. It was a fair watchdog and good with children. With its talented nose and trainability, it made an excellent truffle hunter in the forests of medieval France. The French took to this extravagant, cunning dog, making it their own and giving it the name caniche, meaning "duck dog." They also introduced the dog to performing, dressing it in a clown suit and teaching it to jump through hoops. And they played with the breed, crossing it with smaller breeds to create the miniature poodle, and crossing the miniature with the bichon frise to create the tiny toy poodle.

The coat deceives and beguiles. As a hunting dog, it provided wolves and bears with something false to attack, like a matador's cape. Since it never stops growing, the dogs can fool people, and even themselves, into thinking they are bigger than they really are. A rottweiler and a poodle are the same approximate height, but the rottweiler can weigh three times as much as the poodle. Many a standard poodle has lost in battle because it failing to factor its own fur into the power equation.

And the deception deepens. Have you ever seen a parked car with a white standard poodle sitting at the wheel, and done a double take? With its long legs, round head, and elegant, vertical posture, the poodle sits in an extreme isosceles triangle, like the temple cats of Egypt. Richard Dreyfus, whose life changed when he saw Suzanne Summers whip by him in the white Thunderbird in American Graffiti, could have been fooled by a poodle. Its bouffant hair makes it strikingly similar to a platinum-blonde movie star, a la Carole Lombard or Jean Harlow. The white standard can be shimmeringly beautiful, which causes more than a double take - it makes you reappraise your basic orientation.

But just as they are attractive, so are they hated, and for much the same reason. While poodles (mostly the little ones) were the most popular breed in the 1950s , people have turned against them in the current era. Like the cars of the 50s, the dog of the 50s, all done up in bows and fancy styling, reeks of cutesy schlocky falsity. A properly appointed show poodle is both wonderful and a monstrosity -- remarkable that people can make a dog whose ancestors roamed the forests in packs look like that, but horrible in the extremes they push it to.

The standard is an extremely handsome dog under the right circumstances, with its jaunty spirit, jutting chin and silky ears. But people are turned off when it is clipped and poofed and brushed and shaved so that half of it looks psychotically overdressed and the other half looks shaved sadistically raw.

At no time did he not seem doggy. In fact, if I could put my finger on what made him special, it was that he seemed to be aware that he was a dog, and he seemed to find lots of advantages to being one. He was smart enough to be let off a leash, inquisitive enough to entertain himself, and savvy enough and social enough to accost complete strangers and make friends with them.

Most dogs are confused on this point, blurring the boundaries between dog and human, sometimes to the point of great neurosis. Few dog breeds can tell their own breed from other breeds. But poodles, along with Afghans and perhaps Silukis, have this breed awareness, and they are partial to one another. They're snobs. Which doesn't do much for their already shaky reputation.

We liked that chocolate dog but we still had reservations. My great fear was that I would be out some night with my dog, and I would meet a gang of street toughs, and they would take one look at my poodle and bust out laughing.

We told friends we were getting a poodle and while a few responded favorably, several were against it. The poodle wasn't a legitimate choice in their eyes. They envisioned a small dog with a sharp nose and drippy eyes, sitting in Zsa Zsa Gabor's lap.

So we decided to keep a low profile on the breed. Our plan was to tell acquaintances that he was a very unusual graft from the herding dogs of, oh, the Transvaal. We decided to call his breed the American Standardbred Lionhound.

Brigitte's main concern was Rachel's and Jonathan's allergies. "I placed a dog with an allergic family once and it was the only time I ever had to take an animal back," she said. "Most allergic people can be with poodles. This man was allergic even to poodles. The children were heartbroken. Never again."

To forestall that happening again, Brigitte required that Rachel call a Seminole natural healer that she knew in Minneapolis named Tismal. Tismal practiced herbal healing techniques on both humans and animals. Rachel thought he might have some herbal potions that could do for her allergies what her regular medicines -- Claritin and Benadryl -- could not. But Tismal was a good egg. After he heard the names of the medicines, he conceded there was nothing in herbal lore that worked better than antihistamines.

Rachel's impression of Brigitte was that she was ethical and knowledgeable, very devoted to the health and happiness of her dogs, and very picky about whom she would sell to. This lifted her high above other breeders Rachel called, several of whom seemed completely unaware of health predilections like hip dysplasia, and when a bitch should have her first litter.

Brigitte told Rachel horror stories about people adopting dogs from other breeders, keeping them for a month or two, and then selling them back, or worse, dropping them off at the pound.

She would not sell a dog to an owner until she had interviewed them and they passed muster. One buyer drove up from Chicago to buy a poodle as a surprise gift to his two kids, and Brigitte sent him home empty-handed and pissed off, because she hadn't gotten a chance to meet his family. With Brigitte it was her way or the highway.

Rachel wanted to impress upon Brigitte that the dog we wanted had to have certain characteristics. She wanted a calm dog, one that would not drive me crazy wanting to go out all the time, interrupting my work routine. And it had to be an intelligent dog but a serenely intelligent one -- not one that became bored easily, and resorted to chewing family heirlooms for entertainment.

Because we were new to the business, we did not ask the single most important question about a puppy: "Does he come from ultra-dominant stock? Will he grow up and want to be crowned lord of the canine universe?"

And because we didn't, Brigitte said, "I have just the puppy for you."

It turns out that Dellwood is the richest community in the state of Minnesota. Located on White Bear Lake, it is a reclusive community of yacht clubs, golf courses, and acre-sized lots. Brigitte's house was not overbearing, but it was very nice, and as I rang the doorbell in my jeans and sweatshirt I felt underdressed.

Brigitte's husband Sid let us in. Sid, we found out, was a retired corporate executive. Brigitte, who was blonde and not white-haired, and was wearing pearls, not jeans, invited us in.

"Come this way," she said, in a Czech accent of medium thickness. She did seem a tiny bit suspicious of us, but otherwise very hospitable.

Her house was not at all what you'd expect of a house of dogs. First, there was no barking anywhere, not a peep, although something was ruling in another room. As a decorator she not did shun light colors. Everything was immaculate and bright. In one corner of her huge living room, in a mesh pen on a white carpet, between two white sofas, were two baby poodles only seven weeks into their lives.

They stared around the room with goofy, solemn expressions. Like all puppies, these young poodles gave only a glimmer of what they will grow to be. Their coats were straight, not curly, and their noses had not yet begun the long journey of elongation that is the breed's trademark. Both little dogs stared out into an empty spot in the middle of the room, with an expression that both moroseness -- the waking state of most dogs -- and acceptance. It's the look the little waif girl Cosette wears in the Les Miserables logo.

The dogs were neither alarmed nor excited to see us. But the black one ambled toward us, pressing his nose against the pen, his tail wagging ever so slightly. The young male appeared to be a grafting of a lamb onto a crocodile -- long white teeth and snout and ravenous eyes, all wrapped in spun black fleece. Neither he nor his sister yipped or cried. He allowed me to lift him from his pen and sat with me on the couch for several long minutes.

The kids and I took turns holding the black one on our laps on the immaculate couch, while Brigitte filled us in on what to expect. We knew nothing about poodles, except that they were classy-looking and didn't make us sneeze. Unfortunately, this was the not the meeting where Brigitte would tell us the negative points of the breed. This was the meeting where she would judge if we deserved to adopt the poodle puppy.

I patted the little dog who rested in Sphinx position across my lap, and praised him to Brigitte. "He's wonderful," I said, and he was. He was the gentlest, sweetest-dispositioned puppy I had ever seen.

Brigitte smiled a tight little smile. "And he will be just like his father. Sid, fetch Razz."

Sid went into the adjoining room, opened a kennel door, and brought out a two-year old poodle, black like the one in my lap, but otherwise bearing no resemblance. Where the puppy was soft and lambent and life-affirming, Razz was clipped ferociously, had a military bearing, and eyed us with what I thought was enormous suspicion. Razz was a breeder. His testicles, clipped to the nubbin, jangled between his legs like industrial ball bearings.

"This is what he will grow into," Brigitte said.

My family took one look at Razz and we all had the same thought -- we hoped to high hell the little dog didn't turn out like this.

Our puppy, I promised myself, would sidestep all the nonsense about show dogs, breeders, and obedience training. We would make him a member of our family, and that environment, and not his genes, would decide his destiny. No way would we turn him into a ramrod like his old man. Like my last dog, 25 years earlier, I would raise him right - with lots of freedom and doggy surroundings.

We had no way of knowing, looking at his solemn little self, that he would mature into a creature every bit as dominant as his sire, all my hippie dogrearing practices to the contrary notwithstanding. We didn't know. We couldn't know.

He was sacramentally still as I petted him, beautiful as only youth can be -- docile and unformed and almost sorrowfully calm. I looked into his eyes and saw the blankness that is typical of the breed. Poodles have none of the golden fire of a husky or the emotional warmth of the Labrador. They are almost like sea lion's eyes, waxy black pools of god-knows-what.

We agreed to take the puppy home with us in another four weeks, wanting him to have plenty of time to play with his litter mates and be with his mother. By that time it was the week before Thanksgiving, and he rode home in the joined laps of Jonathan, 8 and Daniele, 12, still and uncomplaining. I looked at the kids' faces as they petted the baby dog - they were never so beautiful to me.

The four weeks passed, and we picked the dog up at Brigitte's and brought him home, draped across Daniele's lap. As we arrived at our house, the rain was turning to snow - the first of winter. It would go on to be a record winter for snow in Minnesota -- sixty inches that would cover the state for five months, then melt into raging floods in the spring, sweeping away whole towns.

We led the little black dog to a sleety corner of our back yard to pee, and waited until he was done. It took ten minutes, and his black coat turned gray from the pelting ice.

I carried him the two flights to my attic office and sat with him and hummed a little tune and stroked his fur. We understood that the first hours in a new place can be traumatic. Baby dogs howl in distress to be in a strange place, away from mom and the sibs.

But this puppy was perfectly quiet. We played for a few minutes, me moving my hand toward his mouth and him snapping, a little feebly, at it. He was all in.

Looking back, what I did next was clearly a mistake. Daniele should have spent the first night with the dog, not me. But I set an oversized pillow on the ground and lay my head on it. The puppy sidled over to me and knelt beside me, putting his chin on my hands. And we napped like that for the better part of the early evening.

A free gift awaits visitors to Michael Finley's web site at http://mfinley.com. Mike is co-author of this spring's eagerly waited book Transcompetition.