This is what happens when you marry a history nerd

Everyone has their idiosyncrasies. Some of us, perhaps, have more than others and they can range from the minute to the all out weird. Myself, I may be borderline OCD in a couple of respects (my music library, for example), and just plain determined on several other fronts. To the latter, I can add the convergence of historical ideas to present a scenario that drives my wife batty at times.


We already have a dog. He's a rescue and somewhere down the line before we got him he must have undergone some sort of traumatic experience because he's about as jumpy as a dog can be. He's settled down in the past couple of years, but he's still pretty high energy, something that is made worse by the fact that we live in a small apartment. Given these pre-conditions, we are quite a ways away from getting a second dog, but when the time comes I'm dead set on what type of dog I want. A vizsla (pron. Vee-shlah).

Sambuca, our current pet, is afraid of the camera.

My quest for a Vizsla.


Now you may be asking yourself, what's the big deal about a vizsla? Well, for starters, they are just really cool looking dog's. They're really intelligent and very trainable. While they are a high energy breed, they're also very good at just lazing around. The fact that they don't shed much is a bonus too. Usually, that's enough for someone to want a dog, right? Ok, here comes the geeky historian justification as to why this is the perfect dog.

How could anyone saw no to this face?

The vizsla is a hungarian hunting dog. In 1904, Arthur Griffith, an Irish politician, wrote a treatise called The Resurrection of Hungary. This served as a model for the first Sinn Fein political platform, something that would change in later years, but nevertheless, Griffith drew the connection between Ireland and Hungary, using Hungary as a model for political change. So I can justify to myself having an historically hungarian dog for this reason (not that one has to justify why they want a dog, but just let me have my idiosyncrasies).



To show how much I've thought this out, I've already picked out a name for my future dog. It has to be a male dog for the name to work, and again this harkens back to Irish history. The vizsla is a red dog, and looks like a hound (if you ask me, I don't know if there is an actual hound family, and if there is, if the vizsla is a member, but it looks the part to me). In Irish mythology the hero of Ulster (Cu Chulainn) is known as the hound of Ulster. The symbol for Ulster is a red hand. Combine those two things and what do you get? A red hound. Good enough for me. So obviously the dog's name has to be Cu Chulainn.

A good looking dog if I ever saw one.

Of course I tell all of this to my wife, and I get all geeked up while she can't do much but shake her head.