Scrappy the Wonder Dog!

After his antics today, Scrappy has earned his own blog post!  When I first arrived on the island in August and was showing Amelia and Carter around campus, we had a local dog become attached to us. He would follow us around.  I didn't think much of the whole thing besides that the dog really liked being petted.

As the semester has progressed, I noticed that the dog was EVERYWHERE on campus.  Always prancing around like he was on a very important mission and always going up to groups of people. Almost like he was checking up on the students to make sure they were ok.  One time even even made it up the huge hill to De Champs (the local restaurant/hotel/bar that a lot of students hang out at).  He sat down with a group of students while they had dinner.  It was then that I learned the dog's name....Scrappy. It turns out he has many nicknames as well. One of my personal favorites is Scrappy-doodle.

Scrappy is the perfect name for this dog. When I looked up "scrappy" in the dictionary, I found at that there are two parts to the definition. The first part is that scrappy applies to something that "consists of disorganized, untidy or incomplete parts" and the second part described scrappy as "determined, augmentative  and pugnacious." The first part fits because the dog is clearly a mutt (hence the disorganized parts). The second part  (determined) fits because he is always on a mission and he sometimes gets mad when you stop petting him.

Scrappy has been known to come into study rooms with students.  He will sit with them for the whole time they are studying and never leaves until they pack up their stuff.  Today, he reached a new level.  He decided to come to class with the first semester students.

Scrappy going to class. Note how excited he is--the tongue is out and tail is mid-wave. 

Imagine this scene, a classroom filled with students who are there for a mandatory lecture.  All of a sudden a dog comes trotting in, down the main aisle. Of course he looks extremely proud to be inside (I personally think he likes the air conditioning and loves being in large crowds of people).  When people try to usher him to the back of the room, he starts running through the rows.  Once people stop trying to catch him, he walks back to the main aisle and just stands there wagging his tail.  Finally someone catches him and brings him outside.  A couple of minutes go by and voila! There's scrappy again! He managed to get back inside.  This probably happened two or three times until finally Scrappy got the message that he needed to stay outside.

That all happened today. Scrappy the wonder dog decided he wanted to take a class and decided that since all the action was inside, he needed to be inside as well. After all, it is his job to make sure everyone is alright.