Chris M.

My dog ran away, AGAIN. It’s like her life’s ambition is to find ways to get out of our yard. It’s fenced in with about a hundred different fences, chicken wires, crates, and signs and boards to block off holes; nothing stops her.

She is back now. She came barking at the front door: “HEY! I know I ran away from home after endless love and care, but you owe it to me to open the door because I AM CUTE!”

This has happened a couple of times, but usually we just hear from some neighbor a few hours later when they read her tag. It’s good she doesn’t look too vicious.

We bought Iggy out of a box in a Hong Kong street market. The sign said “Prize Winning Jack Russell Terrier.” She was with her mother and her brother. We almost got a corgi, but my sister was terrified of it, so we went with the six-inch-long puppy instead. We chose her and not the others because she looked the healthiest. This was approximately five years ago.

My mom said to call my dad and ask him what to name her, because he was on a business trip. I did. “DB,” he said.

“Debbie,” I called to my mom. So, for a few days, she was Debbie. Then my dad came home, explained the mistake, and everyone agreed on the name Iggy, after Iggy Pop.

As a puppy, she was VICIOUS and bit EVERYONE who came near her. Now she just growls if you touch her legs. Same thing if you take a rock out of her mouth (she likes to chew on them) or move in the night while she is sleeping under the covers on your legs.

A few weeks after we got her, when she was being spayed, it was discovered that Iggy was a hermaphrodite. She had girl parts on the outside and boy parts on the inside. She was promptly turned into a (mostly) female, but still humps a toy dinosaur so often that I have a theory that she may have been “truly” male. Lucky we chose a unisex name.

Iggy with her paramour.

She’s had hip problems, too, and has had at least one surgery for that. She’s been shipped around the world so much while we’ve moved from place to place that my dad has named her the million-dollar dog. Once she ate 200 renminbi (the Chinese equivalent of about $37.50) off the kitchen table.

Iggy is absolutely adorable to me, but she just will NOT stay in the house! She tries to dart out the door whenever it opens, and devotes much of her time to researching escape routes in the yard. I wonder where she goes. My dad said we should put a camera on her head and just let her go. I think she just sprints as far as she can in any direction.

Oh, Iggy, we love you so much. You have the best life ever here. We are practically just stairs and pillows for you to walk and sleep on and be carried around by. Why won’t you just stay?!