Bacanack: The Turk

Despite my many years of mandatory study of a foreign language, I still don't speak Spanish. I can manage my way through Spanglish enough when I travel. I even successfully conversed with an Italian named Fabio, who did not speak English, on the North coast of Zanzibar years ago during my stay in Africa. Admittedly though, on some level, I don't even speak English all that well. I tend to make up words (Beau used to dub them "Brookisms"). I say good, when I mean well. I use nouns as adjectives, and invent new tenses for verbs.
Suffice it to say, language is not my thing. I mean, I was a math major at one point. I certainly don't speak Turkish

This dog does. His name is Bacanack, Baci for short.

Sorry Cheri, but I'm gonna spell it phonetically from here on out: Bahji.

Bahji was my first true "puprunnersf CL ad post to reply to meet to run" pup. We arranged that Bahji's mom would bring him to work, and we would do a hand off at lunch. Bahji and I would run, then chill, and his mom would pick him up when she got off work.

As I approached the address for Cheri's work, I instantly recognized Bahji from his picture, pacing about in the park across the street. He's a proud looking pup. Dense, sleek fur, big smile, and really captivating honey colored eyes. I hastily park and stride up to the pair. Sitting with Cheri is a male friend and his dog (there seems to be a lot of male chaperoning on my meets, and I'm always grateful for it, as I think allows everyone to be a bit more relaxed, pups included). I greet the group using Bahji's full name, but I'm certain I've mispronounced it, and quickly introduce myself in hopes no one noticed.

Bahji is friendly, but makes a point to ignore me some as well, ever the street pup. I alternate between petting him and the other dog while his mom explains to me how she lived in Istanbul for over two years and rescued him as a stray from the streets. He was covered in mange, and wasting away. I look at this shiny coated pup with gleaming white teeth and very healthy gums and fail to picture him any other way.

Cheri's friend jokes that I can take his dog too, and I'm tempted, but today is about Bahji, and my first pup run, so I shrug off the offer.

Now I've had Turkish friends before. I knew some guys from pick up soccer who were from Turkey, and we got along fine, so I'm not too worried about this dog. Of course, they all spoke English.

As Cheri goes over a list of commands, in Turkish, that Bahji might respond to, I'm wishing I had a better ear for language all over again. Otur. Sit. Come. What? Thankfully, in her demonstration, Bahji decides not to listen regardless of language. Being in the US just over six months, he's still adapting to having an owner, and listening, and English.

Cheri's friend instructs me to teach him English, and I nod and resolve to myself to do just that.

When it comes time to part, Bahji refuses to get in the car until Cheri is out of sight. She hesitates going inside as she sees him tugging and straining in her direction. I know forcing him will accomplish nothing and thus wait. The door closes behind her. He seems to finally realize I'm coaching him into the backseat and hops right in.

Relief. The first battle won.

Once back at my work, I take him off lead and let him explore around the place. He is exceptionally nondestructive, and I fully trust him to wander out of my sight, but it's not long before he settles to lay next to my desk.
Then it's time to run.
We leash up and after walking a block or so to warm up, we establish a nice, steady pace, and Bahji does great, totally in stride with me.

Most of the pups I've been running of late, I know personally, and thus run them off leash, and they do better that way, but I couldn't do that here. So we made do with the language barrier, and bonded through the run, creating a language of our own, which was so much more than words.

To my pleasant surprise, the only time Bahji tugged at all on the leash was on the home stretch, and to be fair, it was really me who was doing the tugging. As Bahji tired and slowed, he would fall behind, until I coaxed him to catch up again. He ran nearly five miles with me that day, not bad for a first outing, not bad at all.

Bahji was content to sleep on the cool floor next to my desk again for the rest of the afternoon, occasionally getting up for water, or to sniff around and check out whatever food was being eaten, albeit, not exactly beg.

When Cheri arrived to pick him up I warned her that he might be extra hungry that night. Then I picked up his leash, and...

"Bahji, Sit."

And he did.