He’s always been a soldier with those cigarette burns on his legs, his insanely defined haunches, and the single teardrop tattooed just under each tear duct. He’ll growl at you if you crowd him, but when he’s pleased with himself, he’ll strut around like a pimp in a lime green suit.

 And the girls, they love him. The more articulate give him pet names like “Handsome Man” or “Golden Man” or even “Handsome Golden Man.” The others just pant and whine.

 He keeps them mostly at a distance. Otherwise, “it’s Love American Style,” he says in his Cajun-flavored diction. “I get you pregnant, and you go on welfare for a while.”

 His tail, broken at its midpoint, juts forward over his torso like a boomerang, its tip flickering at the slightest bit of interest as he sniffs a tree for his latest pee-mail. When he’s excited, it waves like a flag. Relaxed it sweeps the floor, the way I imagine his birth mother’s does more ominously while she suns herself on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

 If you haven’t figured it out, we’re talking about Nubbin, half-Chihuahua, half-alligator, and 100% handsome.