Shannon’s Pick: Hook

“So desperately I sing to thee of love
Sure but also rage and hate and pain and fear of self
And I can't keep these feeling on the shelf
I've tried, well no, in fact I lied”

The year is 2005, April 3rd to be exact and the Barnes family is welcoming it’s newest member….Kayko Oren Ishii. Yes our dog had two middle names - more on that later.

Gabriel, our eldest, had been wanting a dog since, well since he could say dog and dog was one of the first words he said so since before he was a year old.  Unfortunately, he also had severe allergies and asthma as a child so getting a dog was a super big deal for our family.  Larry and I had cats when we first got together but had to rehome them when we discovered Gabriel was allergic.  So, for almost a decade we had no pets, well except for the couple of times we had goldfish, but I don’t really count that.

 We had always been able to hold the boys off on pets because of their allergies (turns out our youngest, Connor, also had allergies and asthma) but they just didn’t want to wait any longer and it was getting harder to tell them no.  It was also around this time we were building a bigger house with a bigger yard so we told the boys that once we moved, got settled and sod was put in we would finally get a dog.

To get the journey started I would take the boys to the pet store and let them pick one puppy to play with and see if either of them had a reaction to a specific breed, we already knew Great Danes were NOT an option (Gabriel had a chance encounter with one as a toddler and he had an immediate allergic reaction to it.)  They were fine with Lhasa Apso’s (their grandparents had one) and Pugs (the neighbors had one) but that led into the big dog vs small dog debate, Larry and I wanted a big dog.

 As the search continued, we came across a dog at the Columbus Dog Shelter, his name was Yoda and he was a huge cuddly teddy bear of a dog and neither of the boys seemed to have any issue with him health-wise.  So, we attempted to find out all about him (he was a 5 year old male that had been owner surrendered) and eventually tried to even adopt him. We were turned down because we did not have a fenced in yard yet.  Yes, I did try to get them to accept the contract we had to have the fence built as proof, but they said we could take the dog and back out of the contract for the fence and they did not hold dogs.  I do not blame them for this. I can only imagine how hard it is to work at a shelter, but this is important because this is what led us to discover the Akita breed.  I still think of him and hope he found a good home.

Yes, your local shelter has many dogs that have pedigrees and are full breeds and when your kids have allergies and asthma like ours did, we could not risk getting your standard mixed breed mutt. But now we were on a mission, I did all kinds of research about the breed to make sure we were getting the right kind of temperament for our family.  The Akita seemed like a perfect fit, smart but stubborn, loyal and very family oriented.  Now that we knew exactly what breed we wanted, it was time to go about finding one we could call ours.  That fateful day came on a Sunday afternoon. After spending the whole weekend going to shelters, calling shelters, and looking at breeders I finally decided to call all the Petland stores in the Columbus area.  There was one about an hour away that had not one but two Akita puppies, one male and one female.  We weren’t picky at that point about male or female. I told Larry, thinking he would say it’s too late and we’ve already spent the weekend, let’s just wait until later.  What he actually said was “get the boys and let’s get in the car and get up there before they close”. When we get to Petland I tell them we are looking for the two akitas they have.  They walk us over to the dogs, we see the male first and then we ask to see the female.  As soon as I see her, I look at Larry and I’m like it’s her.  So, we got her out and let the kids play with her while Larry and I “discussed” the situation.  What I mean by “discussed” is I told Larry “You need to go do whatever you need to do because we are not leaving here without her”, and we didn’t. After spending so much time looking for the perfect dog for our family, we knew she was the one the moment we saw her.

So, why this song to celebrate the day we got Kayko?  Well, because back in the day when I still worked part-time, I would clean the house when Larry was at work and the boys were at school, so it was just Kayko and me at home.  I, like a lot of people, like to clean while listening to music, I also like to listen to it loud so I would wear headphones so the whole neighborhood did not have to hear what I was playing.  What that meant though was Kayko had to hear me belting out whatever I was listening to and because of the headphones to her it was acapella style.  I believe I have mentioned before that I can’t carry a tune if my life depended on it but hey its just me and my faithful dog at home so why not, well because apparently my dog was a critic and the looks she would give me told me I was getting a pretty crappy review.  (0 paws can’t even howl to it.)  Now that she’s gone I would give almost anything to have her give me that judgmental stare one last time.  The very last picture of this post is one I took of Kayko giving me her disapproving stare while I was singing Hook like the rockstar I am, in my own head.

P.S. I just looked up when the album Four (the one with Hook on it) came out and it too will be celebrating 30 years in September of this year.

P.P.S. For all you Emma Stone fans out there you should check out her Jimmy Fallon lip sync battle where she does this song, it’s from 2014, and she kills it.

Larry’s Perspective:

I have to defer to Shannon on the song choice...good thing I always put ladies first so you get the story before you get to my contributions.

Not a "Release The Sarcasm!" song tonight because this is a life event write-up. 

Once we met Yoda the Akita, I was all in on researching the breed. And boy, oh, boy, they fit the bill for us. Noble. Stubborn. Protective of the pack to a fault.

It's worth mentioning after Kayko, we attempted or did adopt the rest of our Akitas. And no matter how well the rescue society "vets" the dogs, there is always an increased behavioral risk when you adopt. We have experienced this first-hand with two of them. That's why I will never regret buying Kayko. We socialized her as best we could, took her to classes and basically gave her the best damn life she could have had.

But she was never "my" Akita. She loved Shannon first, then the boys and then me. And if you know the breed, she basically treated me like I was below her - because in her eyes, I was!

Everyone that truly knows me knows I obsess over the Akita Hachiko and all the facts I continue to spout:

 - Historically, only noble classes in Japan could own an Akita. They were bred to protect the families, hunt bears and had their tails curled so a wagging tail would not tear through the walls.
 - Helen Keller was the first American to own an Akita - it was a gift from the country of Japan.
 - Akitas almost went extinct during World War II. They were killed for their meat as well as their coats, which were used to line soldier uniforms. It was the effort of one man, Morie Sawataishi that secretly gathered those that he could find so the breed could be saved.
 
I could go on and on, and our pictures could go on and on. But we narrowed down the hundreds to just a few...great, great memories...