The Two Rickys

Last October, my friend Chris — also a writer — informed me that Lukie, her beloved Lhasa Apso, had passed away. So I was glad to hear that recently she got a new pup, another Lhasa Apso. She also told me that she’d named him Ricky.

After congratulating her, I had to give her a little grief, of course, for name-stealing. “You’re supposed to be a ‘creative,'” I teased, “and you couldn’t even come up with your own name?”

But then she reminded me that back when Lukie died, she’d explained to me why she wanted to call her next dog Ricky — and I found her e-mail backing this up: “I’m thinking of getting another dog, a Havanese, and I was thinking of calling him Ricky, too, after Desi Arnaz — so when I come back to the house I can say, ‘Ricky! I’m home!’ Get it?” Chris was really into the I Love Lucy thing — Ricky, Lucy, Fred, Ethel — and since the Ricky Ricardo character hails from Cuba, the whole deal made sense.

Matter of fact, though her new doggy is officially named Ricky, for the time being she calls him “Little Ricky” — another nod to I Love Lucy — at least until the pup’s baby teeth stop falling out.

Having read my most recent post on my Ricky’s propensity for kissing, licking, and tailwagging (“Greetings from Ricky,” below), Chris tells me that the difference between the two Rickys is that, since the Lhasa Apso is known for its aloofness, she doesn’t get that same kind of affection when she gets home that I get from my sweet beagle, and that she has to “work for his love.”

I’m guessing that’s not the only difference. Unless, of course, Little Ricky also happens to eat topsoil, bark at construction signs, and lie down in the middle of the road when he feels his walk should be over . . .