Is he a Girl or a Boy?

"The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too." - Samuel Butler



I buy Walter and Henry new collars for the different seasons of the year. They have their Winter collars that are deep and dark colors and their Christmas collars with trees and lights and they have their Summer collars in pastels and fun prints. Henry always wears some kind of a red collar and Walter wears blue. But when I ordered the Summer collars online, I found a nice pastel blue one with cute little crabs on it for Walter and the closest I could come to red was a coral one with shells on it for Henry. When they arrived, the coral collar was really more of a pink color than the deep coral I'd imagined. I didn't care, but Brian was not too thrilled that his male dog was wearing a girlie collar. He told me that Henry would be embarrassed to wear a pink collar. I told him he was being silly and that the collar was just fine and that Henry wouldn't care.

When we take the boys out for a walk, we always encounter people who want to meet these beautiful creatures and they always ask us a lot of questions. "What kind of dogs are they?" "How old are they?" "Are they related?" Stuff like that.

Well, on this particular day on a walk in the park with Walter and Henry donning their new Summer collars, a little boy, about 5 years old, came up to us and started petting the boys. He asked, "Are they a boy and a girl?" I told the little boy that no, they are both boys. And then he looked at them again and pointed at Henry and said, "Oh, I thought this one was a girl because he is wearing a pink collar!" Of course, I got the "I told you so" look from Brian.

Can you guess what happened next? Yep. When we got home, I took off Henry's collar and swapped it for a more manly one. His new Summer collar is black and red with palm trees. Sometimes, you just have to admit when you are wrong. And I swear Henry looked relieved, too, even though he would never admit it to me.