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Life of Maurice

Maurice's arrival

To tell you the truth, I never liked dogs. I've always lived in a big city, and I was raised in a family which was not so fond of dogs (and pets in general, except one hamster, some wild cats who only came for food, some tropical birds my father used to have to hear them singing, and some goldfish in a bowl - but never a pet the kids really 'pet'), and I grew up having a big indifference for them.

But in the contrary, my other half, Jonathan, was raised in a ranch in mountainuous Jura, southeast France. He grew up always having pet cats and dogs in the house, living in liberty within the big ranch property (together with a lot of cows).

So, I first learnt loving pets (or you call them 'animaux de compagnie' in French) through Jonathan. And within the short time we spent at his parents' ranch, I learnt how undistressful and funny it was, when you spent time with your pets after a rough day. Just by looking at the silly stuff they do, how they look at you, how they react on circumstances, how they love to be caressed and how each pet has its own character (the parents had 3 cats and a dog at the time - two crossed Persians named Jacky and Lola, and a normal domestic cat named Gatico which means little cat in Spanish; and a black border collie named Rosalie/Loulou).

So, when we moved to Jakarta, tied the knot and got our own place to live, a small house with a small yard in front of it, we decided that we wanted to have a dog.

At first, the option was on having a Minipom. My aunt has one, named Kirara, a beautiful blond girl, energetic and so loving. She promised to mate Kirara and when she gets pregnant, one of the pups would be for us. But after some months of waiting, Kirara still didn't get pregnant, maybe she's still too young, and we thought we'd wait longer.

And one day, we saw a tiny tan dog in a pet shop nearby. At first, I thought how small it was, compared to the Chihuahua puppy put in the same cage. They were playing together. I asked the seller, and he answered that the dog was not a Chihuahua, it was a Miniature Pinscher/MinPin.

He handed us the dog, the small pup looked at us with his big deep brown eyes, and we fell in love instantly with him. I thought, why wait longer for a Minipom pup, while we were falling for this MinPin. Afterall, having a short-coated pup would mean a lot less work - not having to wash it once a week, grooming it, etc.

So we took the dog home with us. Originally, he was called Gordon von something, but we thought 'Gordon' is a bit too serious name for a puppy, and after a long serie of discussions, debates and arguments on naming the dog, including potential names such as Maliboo (My first choice of name, following the chihuahua puppy I have on Nintendo DS's Nintendogs, which J-O didn't like much), Samoa Joe (I don't like this name, taken from a WWF wrestler), then Toutou (as in Mario Bros's steel iron ball 'dog'), then Rum-Raisin (because his coat color is tan, as rum & raisin ice cream), Cacao, Cola, Whisky, Vodka, Amaretto, Muchacho and Junior, we decided on Maurice, which we both like. I added 'Pin', his middle name, although Jonathan didn't agree, and keeps telling me it's silly because it's obvious that Maurice is a MinPin, so why bother adding 'Pin' as his middle name? But I keep calling him Maurice Pin anyway, coz I like how it sounds.

Now Maurice lives in our house, since almost a month already. He learns a lot of stuff everyday, and it's so funny seeing that he grows up. When he first arrived, he didn't even dare jumping out of his small sleeping basket, but now his days are spent jumping, running and playing everywhere around the house.

And keeping us busy admiring how cute he is!