Book Review (With Value-Adding Update!): Tales of Tucson

Title: Tales of Tucson

Author: Anthony Randall

Date: 2021

Publisher: Koala T Publishing

Length: So far it’s an e-book; my copy prints to 125 pages in Word

Quote: “Fifteen hundred dollars was a cheap price to pay for a vindictive little poke at your enemy and besides it wasn’t Saul’s money he was paying with—it was never Saul’s money that he squandered.”

Well drat, blast, and bother...This is, as advertised, a laugh-out-loud comic novel that sold well in the UK and might do well in the US.

But it contains adult content. Definitely R-rated content, if not X. The characters can hardly open their mouths without uttering a formerly unprintable word and nothing is hidden from the young about what Bright Young Things such as we were used to get up to in the 1980s. 

Actually the incidence of “parties” featuring sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll sounds exaggerated and the consequences of such revels underplayed, but then again the main characters are rockers trying to launch a hopeless-sounding band, so who knows. The incidence of “jobs” where about all we did was hang out and socialize is not exaggerated. The economy was booming, we had little but youthful charm to offer anyway, and a lot of freshman-class baby-boomers really were paid to hang around workplaces looking cute.

Aunts are not always averse to that kind of thing. Most aunts did some of it at some point. Many aunts are happily married to the men with whom we did it; this is how sisterless men become uncles and some of our nieces and nephews acquire cousins.

But aunts are not supposed to recommend books with explicit sex, and this book has a good half-dozen explicit scenes in which procreative acts take place in the absence of committed monogamous relationships. And, additional trigger warnings: lots of drinking, lots of drugs, no hangovers or addictions.

Sort of a male equivalent to Eat Pray Love, this is the story of a nice, quiet, clean-living young Englishman whose girlfriend, obviously an extrovert, decided he was too quiet and clean. So, having a married sister in Tucson, he headed for warmer, drier fields and a life his ex would envy. Throughout the book he muddles through the life of a rock star, bemused but not too bewildered to make a decent show in a crisis. He even appreciates the scenery. 

(At one point he admits doing something "like Arthur." I thought "Dent, who else?" but have been reminded...just before my movie-watching-and-snogging years began, there was also a movie called Arthur. Randall recommends the movie.)

In the eighties some of us could use the office as the place to do personal chores, errands, reading, knitting, shopping, phone-calling, letter-writing, long lunches and/or snack-grazing, and also work on novels or songs or software packages or other creative outlets, and generally prepare for evenings out (or evenings at home with the family), and still get and keep a job . Anyone could spare a few hours of office time to crank out enough actual work to satisfy, even impress, a normal 1980s employer. Well, in the US, anyway. In the UK the job situation was reported to be very different so it’s hard to blame Brits like Tom, the protagonist of Tales of Tucson, for rubbing it in and exaggerating his memories of “work” in the US for his ex’s benefit. Most employers did expect most employees to stay sober and keep our clothes, at least the button-down shirts and unnecessarily warming hosiery, in place during business hours. Padded-shoulder jackets and stiff 1980s shoes could, however, be left on and under the swivel chair most of the time, even in most of “conservatively dressed” Washington. I could believe that, further south, property maintenance staff might have gone to work in shorts.

Another running, perhaps overrunning, exaggerated joke is inland Americans’ abject fascination with any foreigner (“Golly, I’ve never seen anyone like you before”). The use of rude words does vary from place to place (in Tales of Tucson the Brits use the F-word to refer to everything but what it literally means, which usually gets half a page of detailed description) and an unexpected vulgarity can raise a laugh but, in real life, the audible “tone” of exotic swearing does convey that it’s meant to express hostility. If US listeners can be deceived by a UK intonation, so perhaps can UK visitors be deceived by US hosts’ willingness to smooth over offenses and soothe bad tempers—not without judging the bad-tempered person, of course. On the East Coast most of us may have understood “bollix” to mean “make a mess” rather than, y’know, that, but the familiar word for that was close enough that we could guess what the British meant.

Are American women really undone by any male voice with a British accent? Not the ones I’ve observed. Personally I think some men have more appealing voices and accents than others and the “’Ave a good night?”—“Corr, mate” accents of Tom and his roommate aren’t on my Top Ten list, but it’s more about what they say, and what they do while saying it...what’s a misplaced H when people love each other? We do notice an unusual accent, usually ask where it came from. Some of us may be so distracted by the resulting conversation that we forget to add the price of a tank of gas to the price of a snack, though probably not the ones who keep jobs in convenience stores very long. But I’ve not personally seen any woman, even in a small town, act so overwhelmed by an appealing voice while sober as the drinkers and druggies in Tales of Tucson seem to be. That has got to be the substance abuse.

Of course, as Andrea Dworkin so pungently put it, we don’t necessarily want to be overwhelmed. Of course in the 1980s, and apparently still today, men managed to miss the point: if we took off anything beyond overcoats or shoes on the first date, it was because we’d planned to, which meant that whatever erotic acts took place were all about our hormones and indicated no special attraction and probably no respect for the man involved. There were women who fantasized about going to a party and amusing themselves, in senses beyond conversation or dancing, with half a dozen different guys and leaving with a different one than they came in with; such fantasies were mostly fuelled by vindictive thoughts but everyone had heard of someone who claimed she’d actually done it. (I had one very “liberated” housemate of whom I could have believed it, but that was not among the things she said she’d done.) But that, like the male “playboy” routines, always had that “It’s all about me and my hormones and my pleasures” vibe. Tom and friends don’t seem to notice when they’re being used with a certain degree of contempt. If those guys had actually called the gals they said they were going to call, it would likely have been, “Have we met? Oh right, I remember you, James wasn’t it, or Todd? Oh right, of course, you were Tom and the good-looking one was Seamus. Oh well, whatever. But listen, Tom, Friday night was nothing, y’know what I did with a couple dudes I met Saturday night?”

Nice quiet people who fall in love easily should stay sober on dates. A happily-ever-after relationship that begins with premarital baby-making is the sort of male fantasy in which I can suspend disbelief only in science fiction, where one can postulate sex robots. Tom might learn something from the way his longest-running relationship in Tucson involves Holly, who more or less forces him to begin as “just friends,” but the lesson seems to be lost in the hormones.

As a story, Tales of Tucson may disappoint readers who expect it to form a conventional novel with a plot. Randall gives it some suspense: will Tom’s primary employer get into major trouble, as foreshadowed in the opening scene quoted above? Will that trouble have anything to do with his employment of improperly documented foreigners, e.g. Tom and Seamus? Will he continue to employ Tom and Seamus? If not, will Tom be forced to have some sort of sex with a fat old woman who, his bandmates think, lusts after his body? If he does, will this motivate her to give the band their big financial break (and, if so, are they good enough to benefit from it?), or to have Tom deported? None of these questions is answered by the end of the book. This is a book with a lot more pot than plot, and the witticisms (and marijuana joints) keep rolling up to the final “To Be Continued.” Expect to want the next volume at the end.

It’s possible, though, that you enjoyed the 1980s (soberly) enough to appreciate a slightly rose-tinted nostalgia trip to the fine long summer days of your twenties, or thirties or forties. The frustrations that now seem funny; the difficulty of keeping a band together long enough to attract a fan base to a distinctive sound, of continuing to offer your reggae-inspired songs after your authentic Jamaican influence quits the group, of fulfilling a contract to perform for a group when your Christian influence refuses to endorse the group’s activities and, after praying about it, decides he can’t endorse your activities either, of playing any kind of rock when your drummer gets into or out of college...and that sneaking suspicion that, at its very best, your band may not be all that great and the person who called you “the next Beatles” has lost per credibility by saying that. The jobs people offer the young, and the fact that you did them. The hormone surges, and the inevitable discovery that, whatever you did, they would eventually satisfy themselves, and the discovery that hormones also make a landscape look more lovely, and make food taste better, and make it easy and satisfactory to jam with any half-competent musician anywhere. The way Tom and Seamus are always eating the best dish of something or other they’ve ever had and enjoying something more than they’ve ever enjoyed it before, because when we’re young and eupeptic all the good experiences in life do just keep getting better and better. If that’s what you’d like to be reminded of, while laughing at the way memories tend to exaggerate themselves, then Tales of Tucson is for you.

There’s a salutary hint of self-parody in the exaggerations, too. Tom and Seamus tell themselves all the women they flop into bed with, except “Call me Sunshine,” are pretty and nice. Are they really? Did we tell ourselves everyone we were dating was desirable? Were they really? What about those employers whose expectations were so low that they were planning to continue to employ us, while being pleasantly surprised if we painted over the rude words we painted on the walls? How well did we really do the painting job? What sort of influence would it have been on the music industry if our bands had stayed together and been “the next Beatles”? In the 1980s it was obligatory to describe our job experience with a certain amount of “marketing” spin—but how much spin did our experience need? It can be useful to meditate on the effects both the hormones of youth and the nostalgia of age have had on our memories.

As for the smut: When I read it I was a little old lady in quarantine for Delta COVID, 100% lustproof, and instead of being tempted to the Deadly Sin I just laughed out loud. This was not the way real Eighties dates went, at least on the East Coast. This was the way older people told us real dates had gone in the Sixties. We were exploring all the alternatives to the pleasures that could transmit HIV. But I could imagine someone who was single then, who is married now, who wants to share memories of The Way We Weren’t, having a lot of fun with this book.

So I think this X-rated story has redeeming social value for most readers who remember the 1980s. The self-obsessed young are probably protected from it by their self-obsession; they’d rather read some piece of p.c. angst inspired by The Hunger Games. Tales of Tucson should be enjoyed, on multiple levels, by people who were young in the Eighties. For us it’s a good read.

Morgan Griffith on Rising Prices

It's not only the gas, actually. Prices are just being raised...a bad idea for industries that have been hurt by the coronavirus panic, because hello, duh, customers' budgets were hurt too. There were some people who didn't really need last year's handouts, viewed them as "pennies from Heaven," and splashed them madly about the way they did the Obama stimulus checks. Those days are gone to come no more. I was in a grocery store that's known for fair prices, earlier this week. I looked at something I always buy, saw that the price had risen by 40% since last week, and decided I'll be buying something else for the duration. 

Anyway, from U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9:

"

November 17, 2021 - Gas prices are soaring, due in part to Biden Administration policies that make energy more expensive and more difficult to produce in the United States.

Some of President Biden’s earliest actions sent a signal that energy production was not welcome in the United States. On his first day in office, he cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline. Days later, he ordered a pause to new oil and gas leases on federal lands.

Even as gas prices have surged, the Administration continues to pursue actions that would hurt energy markets. They are threatening to shut down Line 5 from Canada to Wisconsin and in their big government reconciliation bill want to tax natural gas and further obstruct domestic production.

After undercutting domestic energy production, President Biden throws up his hands when asked to encourage domestic production. Instead, the Administration has called on Russia and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to increase oil supplies.

The White House Press Secretary waves away the pain at the pump and says higher gas prices should encourage development of their pet fuel sources. That’s an unacceptable answer for Ninth District residents who have to dig deeper into their wallets to fill up their vehicles.

Last week, I sent a letter to the Democrat leadership of the Energy and Commerce Committee requesting an oversight hearing on the Administration’s handling of high energy costs. I’m working to overturn Biden Administration policies that undercut American energy production and encouraging a return to energy dominance, when America led the way in safe, responsible, affordable energy production.

"

Morgan Griffith Calls Out Handout Scheme (With Status Update)

Y'know, I just spent the last $100 of my COVID panic handouts...Friday afternoon. On Sunday a person for whom I was supposed to have been doing an odd job, in the real world, backed out due to unexplained illness. Having denied that person had COVID last year, and having had acute complications develop, the person now has this year's version of COVID. (Fully vaccinated? I didn't ask.) On Monday person reported that per temperature hadn't shot up and person hadn't collapsed, but person had gone to the hospital and been ordered into quarantine for two weeks. Open-air markets are still decimated, a lot of people are still afraid to reopen their stores and restaurants or shop in the ones that are open, now a good friend and client is ill, and I just spent one of my last two one-dollar bills till payday to come in and...well, actually, receiving job-related e-mail was the idea. I certainly didn't spend a dollar just to buy an oversized cup of pre-chilled Coca-Cola. But what can you do, when the only places where phones or computers connect to anything, whatever network you or your friends have paid for, are still downtown restaurants. Sitting in a downtown restaurant and not even sipping a drink is sooo tacky.

So tacky that as I sat down, waiting for somebody to finish sipping per drink and checking for phone messages, that person felt moved to show Niceness by buying me a drink (naturally choosing a flavor that I'd be likely to drink if I'd had no access to any other liquid for 48 hours) and a sandwich (but it was too early in the morning to hold on to the sandwich for the cats). Icky. I could so easily have been sick on the floor. Attention people who want to be "nice" or "kind": Before spending your money on any unsolicited purchase for someone you don't know well, ASK the person what person can use. Do not buy sandwiches for celiacs. Do not buy beer for alcoholics, do not buy milkshakes for lactose-intolerant people, do not buy meat for vegans; in short, do not buy food for other people until you know what they want, and if it's not on the one-dollar menu, y'know, ce sont les breaks. If you're so timid you can't get the words "Excuse me, please, may I buy you a drink?" out of your mouth, you could just put some cash on the table and run. Though I wouldn't have parked the laptop on the table if I hadn't intended to buy my own drink, as soon as the person finished what person was doing and left the table from which I watch for my ride home.

Another wonderful virus panic day in the Fightin' Ninth District. Well calculated for this e-mail from U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9 (further comments below):

"

Wall Street Journal recently reported that the Biden Administration was considering paying $450,000 each to illegal immigrants affected by the Trump Administration’s zero-tolerance policy. Families could receive close to $1 million, and the total cost to taxpayers could total more than $1 billion. 

 On November 3, President Biden said of the payments, “That’s not gonna happen.” 

 The next day, his staff said he was “perfectly comfortable” with the payments. 

 I believe American taxpayers should not be on the hook for such outrageous sums to individuals who broke our immigration laws. That’s why I cosponsored a resolution from Congresswoman Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) condemning these payouts. 

Additionally, I joined colleagues in sending letters to Biden Administration officials urging them to halt the policy. 

 I will continue to advocate for the rule of law and oppose hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars going to payouts for illegal immigrants. 

 "

Now: Legitimate, law-abiding, natural-born citizens of these United States are still feeling penniless and desperate. I'm one; I know some others. And what we want, dear Members of Congress one and all, is not another round of handout checks. We. Want. Paid. Jobs. Never mind about "career tracks" and such twentieth-century notions, but we do want to get paid for what we're able to do, while we're able to do it. 

I officially achieved "senior citizenship" a while ago, and though I'll take any discounts any clever storekeepers care to offer on their massively overpriced merchandise, I am now in a position to say this, now that it affects me rather than the parents of anyone I know. (Now that very very few people I know have parents, and if we do this proposal would not affect them.) I say we need to save Social Security now. The way to save it is to save it for those who are no longer able to get up and walk to a store, or office, or restaurant, or the Friday Market, or around the streets picking up cans. Save the pensions for those who truly are disabled. Get the rest of us back to work on whatever one-year-or-however-long-we-have gigs we can still do, paying taxes. 

We do not want to be officially pronounced "useless needers." We do not want to be overseen by people who floundered through at the bottoms of easy classes. We do not want to trade our homes, where we remember where things are, for miserable little flats in vermin-filled slum buildings. We do not want a thread nor a shoelatchet from the Welfare State. All we want is to go on earning our livings in peace.

And let the immigrants know, please and thank you, that however much we may like them as people, even welcome them as visitors, there is no room for more permanent immigrants in our economy. Such jobs as are available need to be done by people who were born here. If you were born somewhere else and you have a dream, go home and make your own native country great. 

Book Review: Middle School Shapeshifters

Title: Middle School Shape Shifters

(I don't get a commission on this e-book, but you can see the jacket image here, anyway.)

Author: Luke Loaghan

Date: 2013

Publisher: Luke Loaghan

ISBN: none

Length: 237 e-pages

Quote: “[S]hape shifting existed in the mythology of every culture, in every part of the world.”

Whether or not the stories were seriously believed, people have always made up stories about what might happen if a human could become another animal—at the person’s own will, or at someone else’s. Some of the stories may have been simple metaphors: when a real man pursued by enemies “became a deer,” what the storyteller meant was that he used his abilities to run and hide rather than fight. Some may have described early efforts to expand people’s real or perceived abilities: some people who put on animal skins wanted to be perceived as putting on the animal’s abilities. Some were serious parts of shamanic and pantheistic religions. Shape shifting was seen as an attribute of good spirits and evil spirits, given to humans as a gift or as a punishment.

In Middle School Shape Shifters, Luke Loaghan spins a plausible story of how shape shifting might work in a modern city. The main character, Breccan, slips in and out of any form so easily that he’s apt to transform in his sleep. A friend, Sabel, and her sister and cousins can become jaguars. Other people they meet at gatherings can become trees or flocks of birds. The main characters’ parents can’t change shapes, but accept that their children can.

Fantasy novels are supposed to include conflicts of Good versus Evil, so Breccan and his friends have enemies. Some of these enemies have limited shape shifting abilities too, granted them by their “dark master,” a dismal demon who answers to the name of Breinsgorth. Mostly they seem to transform into legendary humanoid monsters but the “wendigos” don’t even get a chance to enchant any followers of their paths, nor does the man-eater get to eat a man, before the kids assume predatory animal forms and chomp their monster forms.

Middle School Shape Shifters is the beginning of a series. A friend’s dreams warn Breccan that he’s going to use his powers to fight off three attackers. Even before the third attack readers can see the plot of Book Two starting to take shape.

The problem with self-publishing is supposed to be that, while working so hard to say what they have to say, writers tend to overlook boring little details and so they release books full of typographical errors. That’s what’s not to like about Middle School Shape Shifters. Nothing major is wrong with it. “Shape shifting” can be written as two words or as one; in this e-book it’s written both ways. There are inconsistencies in formatting, spelling, punctuation—the sort of thing that does not interfere with our reading friends’ blogs or letters, but that causes teachers not to recommend a book to students. Not many adult men are named in the book, but two important ones have the same given name, Robert, and a third one has a similar name, Roblane; in fiction characters with similar names are supposed to be connected in some special way but no such connection is explained in this book. (Maybe the explanation will appear in another volume in the series.) For me the combination of copy-editing experience and reading the e-book on the screen kept me wanting to change the little irregularities in what looked like a manuscript, but no, it’s the published book.

What you’ll like is that it’s easy to read Middle School Shape Shifters, easy to follow the story, easy to relate to the good characters and even to understand the bad ones. The evil principle appears in this book as Breinsgorth, operating through a group of otherwise unconnected people he’s drawn into a secret society, the Black Heart and Dagger. Within this group a woman called Lucinda is far from the nastiest character, but the one who is motivated first by self-pity and envy, then by fear of Breinsgorth and the others, to attack the main characters. The shape shifters are her primary target; when Lucinda wants to move beyond petty harassment like making faucets leak, her first fumbling efforts to do evil only give the shape shifters innocent victims to rescue. We see a man from the group reaching out to a shape shifter’s friend who feels left out of the shape shifters’ adventures. We can imagine that a bully Breccan has had to deal with in animal form will be even easier for the Black Heart and Dagger to recruit. We can expect that those characters will give the shape shifters more of a challenge, generating more adventures for the next book or books...but so far there's not another book in the series. 

If you liked Harry Potter…well, Middle School Shape Shifters is very different from Harry Potter. That could be a reason why some Harry Potter fans would like the Shape Shifters. It’s a completely different plot, set in a different country. The culture is different; the Shape Shifters go to a day school while living at home, and even in grade seven Breccan and Jackson are aware of being especially attracted to Serenity and Sabel, respectively. There is a similar mix of fantasy adventures with ordinary middle-class suburban life. (There’s also a similar insistence on ethnic diversity in casting; we’re not told that Jackson is Black, but it's easy to imagine him that way because, if he’s Black, then Sabel, Sanjay, Breccan, Jackson, and Serenity would represent the five traditional color-types of humans.) Though J.K. Rowling had the benefit of professional editing and Luke Loaghan doesn’t seem to have had that, each story satisfies the fantasy-reading brain in much the same way.

I recommend that the writer known as Luke Loaghan consider either issuing a revised edition of Middle School Shape Shifters with professional editing, or publishing volume two with professional editing, to break down teachers' prejudice against the book. And I recommend that fans of middle school fantasy and teen adventure-romance Kindle-fiction read this book; it's a fresh concept and a lively story.

Petfinder Post: A Dog Called Puppy and Others of His Kind

(This is a test of the system...how well Google's recovering from that bad case of innovations last winter.)

Some people keep asking for a follow-up post to this oldie: 

https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2019/01/another-dog-blog-post.html

So why not find out whether the system can now handle another Petfinder post? It looks as if it can.

While staying in a nice, though almost catless, suburb in Maryland I met a dog called Puppy--a very big, strong, young, and fierce-looking dog. I was walking back from the grocery store and he rushed around a house in full threat display, roaring and growling and snarling and drooling. Though he could obviously have jumped over the fence that separated him from me, I took the chance that he either didn't know this yet, or didn't care, and said "Be quiet!" And immediately he was quiet, though still drooling over the smell of the fresh bagels from the Giant store. Everybody liked those bagels. 

I didn't give him one. He didn't really expect one, it seems, because after that he was my friend. He always ran out to the fence when I passed by, and I always said some silly thing like "Hello you great big beautiful dog," until I learned that he answered to the name of Puppy. So after that I said "Hello, Puppy." He always wagged his tail and looked pleased to be noticed. Some dogs really do care that much about a crumb of attention.

Puppy did indeed know how easily he could jump that fence. When he really wanted to go outside his humans' yard, he went. But he always came back soon, and mostly stayed in the yard. He was a very good dog who loved and protected his humans. Even and especially the children who had given him that silly name.

I only saw him do his threat display one other time. Once again I was walking back from the grocery store with a bag of groceries. This time the bag included chicken. There was another dog in the neighborhood who did not always obey the local law that dogs had to be on leashes, inside houses, or behind fences. That dog was following just a little too closely, sniffing and sniffing at the bag, obviously looking for a chance to steal that chicken. 

It had been eight years, and by now Puppy was quite an old dog, with a grey muzzle and a stiff leg. He leaped over the fence with a snarl that sent the stray dog home with its tail between its legs. His threat display looked as threatening as ever.

He sniffed at my hand. I let him sniff, and petted him, for the first and last time.

He never even tried to sniff at that chicken.

I don't know whether Puppy had ever actually been employed as a police dog. He wasn't employed when I met him, and he hadn't reached retirement age. He was that kind of dog, though, in breed and in character. Nature always intended him to be a friend and working partner to humans, as good in his way as a man, and better than some.

Not all big wolfish-looking dogs are as lovable as Puppy was, of course. Not just any family ought to keep one. Though German Shepherd, Alsatian, and related breeds are often trained to earn their living (which is not cheap) as police dogs, and sometimes even as service dogs for people with disabilities, not all of them complete training and qualify for jobs! Some of them will jump over fences, and develop even worse habits, if they're not well trained and given something to do that they find more interesting than just guarding an empty house all day. They need regular exercise, and if they have to remind humans about meals, walks, cleaning and suchlike they can be...well, not mortally dangerous. Though lighter than an adult human they're stronger and faster than most humans, so if they think they need to lead someone gently by the hand they can leave bleeding wounds. They are wonderful pets for strong, tough, active men and women. They are usually patient with children, but they're too much for a young child to handle alone. 

I've heard many times, "If you're going to walk alone, travel alone, work in that place, etc., you need a good dog," as someone recommended a police-type dog for me as a pet. It can be very easy to bond with these dogs, and since I like their look and manner I often have bonded with them, but I've never wanted to take the full responsibility...You cannot allow these dogs to run around on their own, although nobody ever seemed to complain when Puppy sneaked out alone. You cannot miss a meal or a day's walk. They are too close to being wolves. They're more intelligent than most dogs and, if they don't know they have a tough, reliable master to follow, they're dangerous. Other canines (except for real timber wolves) recognize them as leaders, and in my part of the world, such a pack of stray dogs is apt to start killing cattle.

Probably the worst thing about this type of dog, though, is that their lives are so short. Puppy lived almost ten years but he was exceptional. Five to seven years is average--with good care, these dogs can live about as long as feral or immune-compromised or glyphosate-poisoned cats, but almost never as long as pet cats or small dogs normally live. If you've been the leader this type of dog loves and needs to follow, you don't forget the dog easily. 

They can and do rescue people, like Rin-Tin-Tin, or guide blind people, or even learn to help people with other kinds of disabilities. Some of them can learn to protect smaller, more vulnerable animals, though they can also be tempted to kill other animals if they're hungry or if they're encouraged to be predators. All of them naturally look menacing enough to be good watchdogs; some police dogs have mild and gentle personalities, but evildoers can't tell which ones those are. Individual dogs of this type do all kinds of things for those who have what it takes to keep them as pets. Haul loads up to and including adult humans around on sleds or "dog carts." Search for stolen or illegal goods. Hunt for food in the woods. They've been known to adopt kittens as well as puppies, too. 

My feeling is that no dog of this type should ever be available for adoption from a shelter. The polite, lovable ones, who are the majority, should all be service animals or pets, and the few who behave badly should be shot, because trying to retrain them is too much of a risk. Nevertheless, because too many people think they want a police dog as a pet and are wrong, shelters actually have lots of them available for adoption. Of course, because the dogs become valuable to those who train and treat them well, shelters may ask outrageous amounts of money for them, which does not help.

1. Zipcode 10101: John John from New York City

At first glance I didn't see a resemblance to the late President's late son, but maybe it's the attitude. Appearances can be deceiving. John John is described as always having been very nice to humans, but unfortunately intolerant of other dogs...hardly an appropriate namesake for an insider who was known for publishing a magazine for outsiders, I say. Anyway, this senior dog gets a glowing recommendation from his foster family. He is described as a well trained animal who knows all the standard command words, at the time of posting as healthy as a big dog can be at his advanced age of eight. 

2. Zipcode 20202: Terrific Turbo from Reston 

With apologies...The D.C. shelter pages are full of large dogs that they list as "German Shepherd Mix," and while I don't doubt that these dogs have a German Shepherd ancestor somewhere or that they are fine, and fine-looking, dogs, they look remarkably like coon hounds, which are also a nice breed, but different. This spring puppy, seven months old at the time of posting, edged out just one other competitor as being the most photogenic specimen of his type on the page. Demand for puppies is said to be high. The shelter lists this reportedly bright and lovable pup as having an "adoption fee" of $389, and urges people who want to rear a police-dog-type puppy to get into the competitive adoption process right away. And, you know...Reston. So many control freaks out there, they probably really mean it. And nobody names a dog "Turbo" unless he's either super-lazy, or ready to train his human to win a marathon.

Bonus: Dolly from Highland, Maryland 

There's a red flag on the other dog too. Dolly from Highland was a full year old at the time of posting and therefore available for a much more reasonable adoption fee of $150. She's said to be a good-natured, lovable dog but inclined to "herd" the children she's met, so not recommended to families that include young children. At one year old she weighed only fifty pounds, making her only about two-thirds the size of Turbo. And her web page has an extensive gallery of photos, in some of which her ears stand up with a classic German Shepherd look, but note the relaxed ear position plus her small size...uh-huh, uh-huh. Black-and-tan coon hounds are also excellent dogs. What raises my hackles about this dog's page is that she came to the Maryland shelter from South Carolina, but the shelter officially refuse to let her be adopted by anyone who lives more than three hours' drive from Highland. Even if you could overlook the question of Beltway traffic this seems deliberately to exclude anyone from this dog's original neighborhood. Given what seems to be the current market value for young police-type dogs, this could mean that someone knows she's been petnapped. Then again it could mean that there's a problem that's not mentioned on her web page, something that kept her from being adoptable in South Carolina...or it could merely mean that the shelter's had a lot of trouble with foreign spammers and hackers, and have set up the web page in hopes of scaring them off. Careful research is needed if you want to adopt this dog ethically.

3. Zipcode 30303: Sarge from Jackson 

According to the shelter, Sarge is a smart, lovable, good-natured, but untrained young dog who was in danger of growing up feral. They emphasize that the people who adopt him must show "breed knowledge" of how the big fellow needs good training, clear rules, and an interesting job. 

I should mention that, once again, when I searched for a type of shelter pet near zipcode 30303, Sarge edged out a lot of dogs who would probably be equally photogenic if the shelters had recruited more skilled photographers. Over and over again I check this zipcode, have to click through several pages of pet photos to find a good one, and realize that this can't possibly be the animals' fault. It looks as if central Georgia animal shelters are full of animals who are probably good specimens of their type, and adorable pets, if you actually went in and met them. They're just photographed in bad lights and/or at weird angles so, in these quick photo contests, I think "They're calling that a [whatever]...?" and my eye moves quickly on. In real life, when they see the actual animals wagging or purring, I imagine Georgia readers thinking "What's the matter with that web site? How could Priscilla King have overlooked this perfect, irresistible...?" 

Bonus #2: Zipcode 37662, Wallace from Greeneville 

Attention local lurkers. If you search for "zipcode 37662" and "German Shepherd Dog" on Petfinder, you'll find some amazing pictures and stories. There is at least one purebred show-quality dog with specific suggestions for which classes in a dog show adopters are advised to train her for, and one shelter has a whole sled-pulling pack of German Shepherd, Alaskan Malamute, and Siberian Husky crossbreeds, just in case some Southern good ol' boy wants to enter the Iditarod. There are sad stories, too, of dogs who are homeless because their humans are and the usual sort of shelter-pet tragedies. Wallace is not reported to be amazing. He's just a big police dog, typy-looking, trained to be a nice pet and available to anyone who has what it takes to keep him as one--for $250. 

I do not want any of these beautiful mini-wolves for Christmas. If you adopt them, adopt them for yourself, please, and thank you very much. I would have to have a human partner who was at least as hardy and healthy as I am (and preferably younger, not that I want any of The Nephews to pass up any opportunities in the cities where they have gone or are going to school) before I'd even want to let any of these dogs sniff my hand. 

Police-type dogs really need to be in homes with two or more humans, in case one human feels too fluzly to go out and run with the dog. Not that all of them will immediately run out into the street and start grabbing humans' hands and demanding that neighbors play with them...but I know a police office worker who had been adopting retired dogs from the department, and one day when the kids were away at school and the adults had too much work to do, I can show you where that dog gently and playfully grabbed my arm, years later. He wasn't a mean dog, or sick, or trying to hurt me; he was trying to get to know a new human to walk beside. Loving a big dog takes a commitment not to let this happen to your pet.