Descriptive Essay Example 2

Carl Adam Robbins
Prof. C. K. Register
ENC. 1101
14, July, 2009
The Ballad of the Blanco Bulldog
Or How to Know a Great White Yard Shark When You See One

The muse for my descriptive essay is my companion, pet, and wildest friend. My bulldog, Bully, has been with my family for 2 years now and is striking in many ways.

To properly visualize this animal, someone must first know that he is a full bred male American Bulldog and, true to the breed, is almost completely snow white. The exceptions to this are the backs of his ears, (they have light brown spots on them) his belly, (which is pink with brown spots) his nose, (big and black) and his left eye, (encircled in black with a brown eyebrow) which goes a long way to making him look like he has recently been in a fist fight. His body is long and slim and if I had his muscle definition, I would never lack for female companionship. No description of this dog could be complete without mention of the size of his head, which is, in a word, HUGE. This canine’s cranium is colossal and cartoonish by common criteria (is that enough C’s for ya?) and has, on a few occasions, made Mardi Gras floats jealous. With a big head, comes a big mouth, and with that, big teeth. Mentioning his insane incisors might give you the impression that he is mean, aggressive, or dangerous, all of which is patently untrue. The only things he uses such big teeth for are eating, nibbling for fleas (which he doesn’t confine to himself, just ask anyone, dog or human, who’s been in my house), and shredding paper, which he does with verve and gusto (it’s an absolute riot to watch).

Bully’s fur is about twice the length of normal velvet and is soft and silky when clean, which is a very rare thing, as he loves the sand pit outside the house. His shoulders and hips are well muscled and feel somewhat like warm stone. His tail, ever in motion, is just as strong. Feeling a little like a furry steel cable, it wags with enough force to knock drinking glasses off tables and does sting a little when he hits me with it at full force.

This dog, though somewhat subdued and quiet inside the house, is a raving lunatic when let out the back door into the yard. He runs around, kicking up sand and barking with machine gun rapidity at everything and anything he can fix his somewhat short attention span on. His voice booms as he runs and jumps with such fervor that I have, on more than one occasion, had to pull him out of the crepe myrtle tree in the back yard after he made a nearly four foot vertical leap onto the bottom branches, just so he could bark at squirrels at a little closer range.

I have told how this canine comedian, this fool of a Fido, this barking buffoon, looks, feels, and sounds like. I will now recount that he, no matter what, smells and will always smell, like a dog. No amount of bathing or cologne can stop it, that bouquet of fur, dirt, and wild that most dogs emit in small amount and Bully exudes with beastly magnificence. He is, I think, proud of this, and I believe he works on his musk just like people work on their hobbies, that is to say, with pride and diligence.

All of this writing brings me to the last of the five senses, taste. I will say here and now that I have not, nor will I ever taste my dog. Never. Not ever. If I did it might forever alter man-dog relations. Besides he and I have a no biting agreement, he won’t bite me if I don’t bite him. So far mutual deterrence has worked with this behavior as it works with most other antisocial behavior (like nuclear, chemical, and biological war).

Lastly, no description would be complete without mention of the character of the subject. The best way I can tell about Bully’s character is this next story.

About eleven P.M. one night I was shining a laser pointer around the house and Bully was chasing the red dot all over the floor (to them it looks like a bug, I think). He would chase it on to the couch, up and down the hall, along the walls and was so hyped up that when I started shining it up higher on the wall he began jumping for it. The higher he jumped the higher I shone the laser until it was about 6 feet up the wall. He jumped for it and made it all the way up to the light but, at the apex of the jump, realized how high he was and panicked. When he came down he came down wrong, on his left rear leg instead of evenly on both of them. His body went one way, his leg another, and I knew before he yelped that when he landed he snapped his leg nearly in two. I quickly called my mother and cradled the dog in my arms while she called around to an all night emergency vet hospital. My mom drove and I held him the whole way there. He didn’t make a sound. Not another yelp or snarl. We arrived at the hospital and the vet techs greeted us at the front door with a stretcher and when I placed him on it he reached his head up, licked the lead techs hand, and began wagging his tail. They promptly went through the procedure of setting, aligning, bandaging, and splinting his broken leg and within two hours he was home resting comfortably, with only a splinted rear leg wrapped in yellow gauze with a green puppy foot print pattern on it to tell that anything had happened.

The next morning he woke up, blazed through the house and out the door like any other day, and a year and a half later, he is still the same dog that walked up to me as a stray in a gas station parking lot and when I went in, refused to come in with me, but waited patiently for me to come back out.


I talk to him when I’m lonesome like;
And I’m sure he understands.
When he looks at me so attentively,
And gently licks my hands;
Then he rubs his nose on my tailored clothes,
But I never say naught thereat.
For the good lord knows I can buy more clothes,
But never a friend like that.

~ W. Dayton Wedgefarth