A name!  

He didn’t have a name!

What should we call this WIREY little bundle I’d been holding in my arms all the way home from Nevada?

We tossed a bunch of names around while we drove.  

Nothing fit.

When we were near home, we stopped at our neighborhood grocery store.

Lobo ran in for something.

I sat in the car falling deeper in love with the most adorable face I’d ever seen.

I talked to him, I kissed him.  

He was unaffected…..busy squiggling in my arms and stretching to see anything he could see.

We lived in a small town in the Sacramento Valley called Lincoln.  

YEP, that’s where we lived!

“This is Lincoln,” I told him.

“This is where you live…..Lincoln,” and the bells rang in my head.

LINCOLN!

When Lobo returned to the car I could barely wait to tell him.

“Look at him,” I said…..”he’s Lincoln.”

Lobo was quiet and studied that face.

“How ‘bout Abraham,” he wondered  

“Abraham????”

“Ya, Abraham of Lincoln!”

“Um…..NO! Stop that!  This is serious.

I looked at that face.

“Lincoln?”

I said it again, “ Lincoln?” 

He turned and looked at me, through my eyes and right smack down to my heart.

And he was Lincoln!!

The first few weeks were not smooth sailing.  

I took him outside often every day and I instructed, “potty.”

Nope, not til he was back in the house for ten seconds.  

He obviously preferred to pee on the carpet instead of grass.

I don’t care how many times I took him outside every day…..he peed soon as he got inside the house, EVERY time!

And when he was done, he’d look at me as if to say, “in MY time.”

Then there was the sleeping arrangement.  

I wanted that little buggar right in bed with us.  

Lobo was OK with that EXCEPT, it became habit that the middle of every night Lobo woke up with a yell because Lincoln was biting his arm.  Not nipping, biting with those sharp puppy teeth.

EVERY night!

WHY?  

We had no idea!  

Before long, Lobo was wearing long-sleeved shirts to work to hide the bite marks all the way up his arm and the bruising.

Within a short time, Lobo began to verbalize his dislike for this DOG!

“I hate that dog.”

He was sounding just like the guy in Grass Valley who hated his girlfriends sweet faced Terrier.  

“NO!, you can’t hate him.  Give him a chance.”

Each day I loved him more and more and Lobo hated him.

It was almost funny but not quite.  

Lobo never hated anybody and he was hatin’ this cute little guy.

We went to the library and bought a book on Terriers.  

We asked the Vet.

The answers were the same…..Terriers take about THREE YEARS to get to where you really like them and THEN they BEGIN to behave!!

THREE YEARS?  

Lobo would have gangrene of the arms by three years from all the bites!

Lobo’s daily chants were he hated the dog and would like to “get rid of him.”

We banned him from sleeping on the bed but that didn’t stop him.  

He was a high-jumper and up he’d bound up while we were sleeping and bite Lobo’s arm as fast as he could in as many places as he could.  

The “OW, YOU LITTLE BASTARD” yell became a nightly happening.

What was the deal?

That sweet face never ever bit me!

There was another problem.

Lobo began telling him he was “goofy.”

We’d be in bed, Lobo would yell to him that he was goofy and up on the bed he’d jump.  

Lobo barely had time to hide under the covers before the growling and trying to uncover him began.

Lincoln did NOT like to be called goofy!

Lincoln had some real strange habits.  

He didn’t lick water with his tongue. 

Nope, Lincoln would go outside, jump in our Koi Pond, get all soaky wet and then go underwater with his head and come up with his mouth open scooping the water.  I think maybe like a hippopotamus.

No licking for Lincoln.  

That would immediately make him cough and gag and the next part was comical…..

The only way we knew he was in the Koi Pond is the gaggy noises he made when he scooped up the water.

THAT was our cue to RUN to the dog door because we knew he was gonna head for the house, SOAKING WET.

Sure enough, he’d bound out of that Koi Pond and head for the doggie doors, one leading him into the garage and the other into the house.  

It was a race.

He knew we were running to block him out and he kicked up the dirt and he ran like a gazelle from the jungle.

We USUALLY beat him but, there WERE horrible times when he won and would stand inside the living room, look at us and then shake all the pond scum off of him while we both screamed, “Lincoln…..NOOOOO!”

He was also very strange about food, just like his delivery mother had told me.  

When we gave him a treat, he just held it in his mouth and stared at us, didn’t move.

So, we figured he wanted another one and, he did!

He’d wad both of them in his mouth and go hide and eat them……GOOFY!

Oh, if he couldn’t get his drink of water from the Koi Pond then second best was to put his two front feet right smack in his water dish and get all soppy wet and then drink the water.

Every day Lobo told me how much he HATED THAT DOG!

Me? 

I kept falling deeper and deeper in love with him.