Jinxed

"Jinx"

Alyson, my best friend since Kindergarten, commissioned this portrait of Jinx for her mother, Marti’s, birthday. Jinx is a “designer dog”—one half Yorkie, one quarter Chihuahua, and one quarter Long-Haired Dachshund. Alyson and her family have always had designer dogs for as long as I can remember, and long before designer dogs were hot items. Whiskey and Tiffany, both Cockapoos, were Alyson’s childhood dogs. I thought they were incredibly chichi with their fancy French hair do’s and their bags full of little-dog tricks. My family, on the other hand, had retrievers—Tracy, a black Lab, and Charlie, a Golden—who got hosed off on the front lawn when they stank and who would fetch tennis balls for as long as we threw them, but wouldn’t stand on their hind legs and dance. Now Alyson has Lily, a Yorkiepoo or a Porkie, depending on which breed is ascendant.

Jinx started her life as Grace—“a wildly inappropriate name,” Alyson admits. Grace was to be Alyson’s designer pup, and Grace is lucky to still be alive. First Grace dove headlong into the swimming pool and almost drowned, wee thing that she was. Then Grace sailed off the second-floor landing and plummeted, not one floor but two, straight down to a hardwood floor, not once but twice! The first time Grace fell off the landing, she was miraculously unharmed, although everyone thought she’d be dead. The second time, Grace cracked her jaw and knocked out her front teeth, but remained determinedly alive. Shortly thereafter, Grace became Jinx, and Alyson selflessly gave her beloved but bedeviled pooch to her mom, who was in dire need of a canine companion at the time. It’s been true love ever since! Marti and Jinx are inseparable. Jinx even flies with Marti, traveling in her own little carry-on back-pack. When Jinx isn’t traveling with Marti, she has devoted herself to amassing the largest collection of squeaky toys on the West Coast of North America. She squeaks each toy in her collection on a daily basis. And, since Jinx got her new name, she hasn’t had one life-threatening mishap, although I still detect a glint of the dare-devil in her eye!