My Betty!

I'd like to introduce you to Betty. Some of you have met her, some of you haven't. You may have seen her pictures here on my Blog in the past. But, I've never really talked about her much, so I figured that I would write a little about how Betty came into my life.

I first met Betty on November 11, 1993. I don't know what was going through my head that day as I drove to the Atlanta Humane Society. I was just going to look, I told myself. I had intentions of someday getting a small dog-- a very small dog. I was thinking of something like a Jack Russell or some other form of terrier. As soon as I walked into the "puppy room", I was immediately drawn to a holding area that contained 13 of the cutest little puppies I had ever seen. They were all brothers and sisters from the same litter. The boys all wore blue collars. The girls wore red collars. One of the puppies, the liveliest of the litter wasn't wearing a collar. I immediately identified with this dog. I liked the fact that this puppy didn't want to be "labeled". I scooped the puppy up in my arms and it licked my face. I figured out that the dog was a female. I had my heart set on a male, but this puppy had already worked it's magic on me. I didn't care that she was a doberman mix-- she was small at the time and I couldn't imagine that she would get much bigger. I filled out the paperwork and within the hour I was driving home with a 6 week old baby in my lap. I decided I needed to come up with a name for her. It was a very windy day, so I thought about calling her Wendy, or Gale. The radio was playing a Bette Midler song, so I thought of naming her Bette. I decided to play a CD- the soundtrack to "Sunset Blvd". I had just recently returned from a trip to Toronto, where I'd seen the premiere of the play, starring Diahann
Carroll. I was thinking of naming her Diahann. My mother's middle name is Diane, so it would be kind of a family name. As I was contemplating wether or not my mother would be offended if I named a dog after her, Norma Desmond was confronting her young "boyfriend" over a phone number she'd found in his pocket. "Who's Betty Schaefer?", she shreiked as she read the phone number. That confirmed it-- my new dogs name would have to be Betty. The name stuck and eventually fit her perfectly!