English bull terrier Carmen's operatic wail

Eileen Mitchell Wednesday, December 21, 2011


Carmen, a petite English bull terrier, was named after the opera for her nonstop eardrum-splitting wailing during a 100-mile drive home.

Avid dog lover Rayne Wolfe has always harbored a soft spot for strays and rescues, no matter what the breed. When a friend offered one of her English bull terrier pups to the Wine Country resident, Rayne found she couldn't refuse the funny-looking dog.

This will be our first Christmas with Carmen. Our petite English bull terrier earned her operatic handle last January after we survived nonstop eardrum-splitting wailing during the entire 100-mile drive home. She had staying power, that pup.

You don't see too many English bull terriers. Maybe that's why people remember "bullies" from history and advertising so well. Gen. George Patton had his white bully, Willie; and Target has its white puppy with the red bull's-eye. Not a day goes by without someone addressing our little girl, Miss Carmen Miranda McGillicutty Jones Wolfe, as Spuds McKenzie.

She and we don't take it personally.

People love these canine "eggheads." As a pup, Carmen was about as big as a football with 80 percent of her body mass dedicated to her gigantic wobbling head.

Her nose is velvety soft like a tiny horse muzzle. With a brindle coat and a white stripe down her face, many people confuse her with a pit bull or a pit bull mix - not that there's anything wrong with that. It's a great opportunity to talk about bull breeds and the challenges and responsibilities of owning one.

Having already trained and socialized Daisy, our late Boston terrier; Friday, our late fox terrier; and our cranky and deaf 15-year-old Jack Russell, Whiskey (so named because we didn't drink till we got that dog), my husband and I thought we were ready for what we were told is the ultimate challenge for terrier fans.

After puppy socialization and loads of free-run dog parks, we decided to bring Carmen to Ray's Bar in Petaluma where, on Sunday afternoons, dogs lounging on the old plank floors can equal the number of paying customers. Our dog's contribution to the ambience is possibly the most toxic, silent and low-spreading green gas that ever erupted from under a dog's waving tail. Yet Carmen is popular at Ray's. Maybe it's because she taught us to quickly buy a round before being eighty-sixed.

When you fall in love with a dog built like a Sherman tank and armed with an alligator jaw plus a meaty tail capable of knocking grown men to their knees, you have to put your love glasses on. We love her strength, her determination, even her habit of banging metal bowls for fun.

We know she can scare people by her looks. It doesn't help that her guttural growling amplified by her head is so blood chilling that a sound engineer from Skywalker Ranch came to the house to record it. We joke that if Godzilla ever marries King Kong, the baby will sound like our Carmen.

This holiday season we find ourselves grateful that Carmen's nipping fell away with her baby teeth. She is a good dog despite her latest naughty behavior of clamping down on jeans hems and looking up through her eyelashes like a flirty flounder.

She will always be a tenacious little dog, but we are tenacious owners, too. And we're happy that she'll be hanging her stocking at our home for many Christmases to come.

English bull terrier Carmen's operatic wail