He doesn't have a dog now. He will have one eventually.
His first experience with a dog was when he was a kid and his family had a toy poodle named Louis. Technically, he was Louis XVI. His parents were Napolean and Josephine, and he had a brother named Robespierre.
Had he been born a decade or so later, he could have been Jean Valjean or Marius.
Napolean and Josephine were known as Nappy and Josie to TigerBlog's Aunt Frannie, one of those remarkable people you meet in your life who stay with you long, long after they're gone. TB's Aunt Frannie survived cancer and a heart attack to live probably into her 80s, as TB remembers it.
Frannie was the wife of TB's maternal grandmother's brother Maurice. She was one of those perpetually upbeat people who always loved to have young TB in her house, which was outside of Washington, D.C., in Silver Spring, TB is pretty sure.
And apparently she had a thing for French history.
Louis lived until he was 12, done in eventually by diabetes, possibly from his life-long habit of licking ice cream bowls clean pretty much every night (unlike the real Louis XVI, who was guillotined at the age of 38, done in by those pesky revolutionaries). MotherBlog, a nurse, gave the dog an insulin injection every morning for the last six months of his life, but eventually Louis didn't like getting the needle.
As dogs go, he was a good one. You could let him out in the front of the house without a leash, and he'd never even consider running away. Why would he? He had it pretty soft.
He ate a lot more people food than dog food in his life. He had a lot of ice cream. He would spend summers with MotherBlog's parents in the quaint doggie vacation hamlet of Queens. He would jump up and down and bark in his high-pitched little voice when anyone would come into the house and then show his ferocity as a guard dog by going over to the person - family member or stranger - and rolling onto his back in a gesture that said "you can take anything you want if you play with me first."
TigerBlog's next dog won't be a toy poodle. He would definitely be okay with a French bulldog. You know. Like Trevor Tierney's.
When last we left Cannon, Trevor's Frenchie, he was eagerly and excitedly learning to skateboard. TB referenced it Friday.
Then there was this follow-up:
How great is that?
First of all, John Mack, what kind of attitude is that? Pressuring the dog to skateboard? Trevor's right. Canon could use a little inspiration. He looks determined on that skateboard. In fact, John, the father of two young boys, could learn from how Trevor has inspired the dog.
For those of you who don't know who John Mack is, he's one of those old-guard alums, okay, an alum from the Class of 2000. He was also a 10-time Heptagonal track and field champion.
His best time in the 400 was around 46 seconds (as opposed to 10.18 seconds for the 100, TB is pretty sure about this one). TB once had this actual conversation with him, a few years ago:
TB: At one point, you could run 400 meters in 46 seconds. If you went to the starting line today, how far would you get in 46 seconds?
John Mack: I'd be 100 yards down the track clutching my hamstring.
Anyway, "grandpa," in Trevor's tweet, would be Trevor's father Bill Tierney, who coached Princeton to six NCAA men's lacrosse championships and then coached Denver to another one. Trevor was the first-team All-America goalie on Princeton's 2001 NCAA champion, and he played a huge role in getting Princeton its 1998 title as well.
TigerBlog sent a tweet out yesterday on the @tigerlacrosse feed asking about Princeton men's lacrosse teammates who had at least 60 points in the same season. It's happened twice, this current year and one other time before.
Who was it?
The answer was David Tickner (66) and Wick Sollers (68), back in 1976. This year, it's Michael Sowers (70) and Gavin McBride (61).
TigerBlog, by the way, has now referred to Sollers as "Sowers" twice. He apologizes for those two, and for the next time he does it.
Tickner and Sollers also have the record for most points by a Princeton duo in one year, with 134. Sowers and McBride need three to tie.
McBride, actually, happens to be leading Division I in goals scored, with 46. At his current pace and with two more games (at Cornell Saturday, against Brown in the opening game of the Ivy League tournament), he would tie Jesse Hubbard's 21-year-old program record of 53 goals in a season.
He also may have just set the record for "most goals scored in a game that clinched a spot in the Ivy tournament but did not earn league Player of the Week honors," after his seven-goal effort against Harvard Saturday.
As for Sowers, at his current pace, he would have 81 points after the next two games. The program season record is 78, set by Mike MacDonald in 2015.
And if you really want to look ahead, after 13 games of his career, Sowers is 28.3 percent of the way to Kevin Lowe's career record of 247 points.
As TB mentioned, unlike most years, the Ivy League tournament field is set. Nothing that happens this weekend can change the matchups or location, though there is still some drama, as a Princeton win over Cornell and a Yale loss to Harvard would give the Tigers a share of the championship.
The Ivy League tournament will be Princeton vs. Brown and Yale vs. Penn, at Yale, a week from Friday.
By then, who knows how good Trevor Tierney's dog will be at skateboarding. And who knows if TB's future dog will be a skateboarder.
But he will be the dog that the nice old guy is always out walking. At least in a perfect world.
In a cold and lonely world?
TigerBlog would have a cat.
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