Jorah Borkmont, Part 1 (009)

I don’t want to compare the love I felt for Yoshi and the love I feel for Jorah. They are two very different dogs at two very different times in my life. Yoshi was my first dog and he will always be special to me. And I’d love to tell you about silly, dopey Jorah.

This dog wiggled his little butt into our lives after playing with the idea of getting a dog for many months. Bored at work, I browsed PetFinder a couple hours per week. They can know now; I don’t work there anymore. I knew I wanted a Chihuahua mix and, inspired by Jenny Lawson’s beautiful Papillon named Dorothy Barker, I searched for her breed as well.

Yoshi was laid to rest in my ex-mother-in-law’s back yard on Saturday, May 26th after the ground thawed. A few days later, a blonde Papillon Chihuahua mix named Frankie showed up on PetFinder. Mike and I made an appointment to meet him, having 95% decided he was coming home with us. The day after we ran a full Tough Mudder course, we struggled our sore bodies into the car, drove two hours west, and met the squirmy twelve week old. He presented us with a deer antler; we offered him a blue, nubby Nylabone and instantly fell in love when he accepted it. He never dropped the blue bone, and his foster mom explained that he was very task oriented with toys, a good sign of intelligence.

We sat on the floor and played with him while discussing his history with the rescue organizer and foster mom. He had been born into a puppy mill in Paris, Texas, given to a high kill shelter at six weeks old, and got sick with Parvovirus somewhere in his journey to the rescue in Michigan. His was the sickest of five total littermates: poked, prodded, and tested, he and his three sisters survived. His brother did not. The foster mom nursed them all back to health from Parvo and eventually spay and neutering surgeries. She did not, however, attempt to potty train them in any way. The rescue organizer hung her head when she heard the foster mom describing protective blankets on furniture and potty pads in the crates. So did I, but it didn’t deter me from wanting to bring him home. I’d potty trained before and I could do it again. Mike and I looked at each other and nodded in sync—he was ours. 

After drawing up the papers and exchanging money and information for his microchip, we took pictures and headed home. Immediately, we started calling him Jorah Borkmont, named after the loyal companion to Daenerys Targaryen. Nervous and shaking on my lap, he sniffed me until he no longer had energy to stay awake. 

Similarly exhausted from the ten mile obstacle course the day prior, all I wanted to do was sleep when we got home, but that was impossible with this fully reenergized puppy. We allowed him to roam the grass outside our apartment for a long while, but it didn’t seem to matter as he peed almost immediately after getting inside his new home. As the day went on, and we took him outside for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes at a time, we grew more exhausted waiting for him to potty. I was on the verge of tears, as sore as I’d ever been from pushing my body to its limit, and Mike was afraid that I wanted to give up and return him. 

“I would never. I could never do that. He is our baby,” I burst into tears. “It will just take time. And patience that I just don’t have right now.”

I was similarly afraid that Mike would not have the consistency required to train Jorah. He proved me wrong as we navigated various methods of teaching over the next few weeks. Slowly, the accidents stopped, and we began to trust Jorah roaming the carpet unattended. Jorah picked up commands very quickly, learning first to sit, lay down, and speak. Mike watched me and learned how to train his first dog, and continued to impress me.