Original Waggit

I got the idea for Waggit many years ago when my wife and I were living near Central Park in Manhattan. One day we were walking in the park and saw a puppy about six months old who had been badly abused. It was in the middle of the winter, and he was starving. We managed to rescue him from the park and took him back to our apartment. We decided we would keep him for the weekend and then take him to a shelter. Because he was so bouncy we called him Roo, after the character in one of my favorite children’s books, Winnie the Pooh.

The weekend stretched into fourteen years, and when he died peacefully in our arms we lost a close and dear friend. He was not, however, an easy friend. His early experiences made him wary of humans and fearful of other dogs. He loved us, though, and he loved to chase a ball, anywhere and at any time. In fact the last time he ran after a ball, rather slowly, was the day before he died. The first winter that we lived with Roo we rented a house next to a lake in Connecticut. It was a large lake, and completely frozen. We bought Roo a “super ball”, one that bounced over long distances, and on the ice it would go for hundreds of yards with him racing after it, sliding as much as running. It was this that gave me the idea of the competition that the Tazarians have on the frozen lake in the park.

At the time we rescued Roo I loved to run long distances and ran around the road that circles the park every day. When I was in the northern end, where it is much more thickly wooded and visited by fewer people, I frequently saw dogs that were wild. They were easy to recognize. First of all they were never with a person; they also never had collars or tags; they slunk along, not making eye contact with anyone they saw; they stayed in open ground for as brief a time as possible before quickly returning to the undergrowth. As I was running I often thought about what would have happened had we not rescued Roo. Would he have joined these dogs? Was there more than one pack? If there was, did each pack fight the other for territory? These thoughts led to the story of Waggit and the Tazarians, and their struggle for survival without the help or interference from human beings.

One last secret. There was a dog in our building that Roo hated, and who hated Roo. His name was Wilbur, and to get revenge on him for Roo I turned him into Tashi’s evil lieutenant. If there is a heaven where dogs go Roo is probably smiling smugly about this before he settles down for his afternoon nap.