On how my dog was renamed Randy for a day and became a minor celebrity on Craigslist

My older male dachshund is named Leonidas.  We call him Leo for short.

He is also known to my shame as Pumpkin Pickles Magoo.  If you call for Magoo, he will come. My little girl dachshund has been known at times as Pepper, Pope, and Penelope P. Pennyworth; we mostly call her Penny, which is her "given" name.  They both generally subscribe to the notion that you can call me anything you want as long as you don't call me late for dinner.

So it really was not a stretch for my little girl dachshund Penny to suddenly be called Randy for a day.

It happened, as these things so often do in my life, completely randomly.   On Saturday, I was going in and out the backdoor of my house frequently, with Leo close behind me.  As the door would start to swing shut, I'd here the frantic clitter clatter of Penny running to catch up and come with us.  It reminded me of Ralphie and Randy from A Christmas Story; Randy, the younger one, was always running and trying to catch up to his big brother Ralphie.

Here's a link to that scene if you have no clue what the hell I'm talking about:
http://www.trailercodes.com/dvd/DVCeIFFLFaZaGG/walk-to-school

Hence on a sunny, muggy Saturday afternoon in August Penny became known as Randy in a most random manner.

Later in the day, I was contemplating the end of the second day of my three day garage sale.  Our first day, Friday, thanks in no small part to a Laotian man named Lee who at 10 in the morning arrived in a beat up old sedan and proceeded to buy up about half of the sale at once, had been very successful and lucrative.  I was stoked; if we kept that pace, we'd far exceed my goal for the sale.

Saturday, reality set in.  I cooked in a garage for 12 hours for what amounted to about $100.  As I looked around, we had way too much stuff to get rid of still, and little hope in doing so.  I'd been leery of doing the sale on a Sunday, but now it looked like we had no choice.    I stood in the shower Saturday evening, thinking about my next move.  I needed some way to draw attention to my sale, to make it stand out.  I ran through several ideas, giving each careful consideration, before it came to me.  And I knew that I had just found something that might be exactly what we needed.  It could be pure gold.

Or a giant dog turd.  Nothing in between.

My idea didn't start out all that great.  I told my wife about it at dinner, and while she grinned, it was an uneasy one, the sort that you give a crazy man when you're trying to placate him (I get that grin a lot). Really the only feedback that she had was we needed to make a few changes to protect our anonymity (which really, considering that my idea had our address in it, made little sense to me, but I nodded agreeably anyway,  you know the type of nod you give your wife when you don't get it but it isn't worth fighting about).

Later that night, I sat down and wrote a draft of my great idea.  I showed it her, and she promptly said, "maybe you should look at this in the morning before you post it.  You're better in the morning with things".  Not exactly the exuberant ringing endorsement that I was hoping for.

Sunday morning arrived, a clear, cool morning with a hint of rain in the air.  I reread my idea, thought about it for about two seconds and forged ahead.  Here's what I came up with:

"Randy" made his Craigslist debut Sunday morning.

As a buddy later pointed out, I effectively catfished Craigslist right out of the gate.  The picture of "Randy" is actually about a year and a half old, and what you see on "his" face is actually protein powder, not flour.  I was worried that if I put protein powder some troll would show up to tell me how unhealthy it was or something like that (for the record, at the time that she ate it she was very sticky, but otherwise just fine.  Dachshunds have stomachs coated in lead).  What I needed was a picture of a sad puppy, and that photo certainly did the trick.

Things started out slowly- not really any traffic at all for about an hour and a half.  Then an older couple walked up the driveway.  When I greeted them, the man exclaimed, "I want to see Randy!" Followed immediately by the wife saying, "who?"  I popped up out of my chair and went to grab Randy, who was quite perplexed as to a) why Leo was being left behind b) why I was taking "him" to the garage and c) why there were strangers there that were petting "him".  Randy was an immediate hit, although you could tell the guy was confused why what was obviously a little girl was named Randy.

Minutes later, another car arrived, again asking for Randy.  At this point "he" was relegated to garage duty for the remainder of the day.  Penny is a sweet little girl, but she is a little bit shy.  This much attention was pretty unheard of, especially without Leo around.  She warmed to it all rather quickly though, augmented by plenty of treats.  I'd say about 75% of the folks that stopped on Sunday knew about Randy.

Financially it was a successful day as well.  We made enough to meet my goal for the sale, which was rather ambitious.  I don't think we would have come close without Randy.

Which is why he had to do another Craigslist post Sunday night:

What I didn't count on were people responding to the thank you ad wanting to talk to Randy:

I contemplated how to respond for about two seconds before firing this off:

Now Randy's getting fan mail:

Penny hasn't a clue why she's getting so much attention but she's not complaining.  The legend of Randy will live on for a long while I think.    I'm exploring the idea of allowing Randy to be hired out to sell other things:

BONUS ROUND TIME:

If you want to try Rocky Mountain Oysters, you can try them here:  http://buckhorn.com/appetizers.php