My dog, Mangelina Jolie

Will and I were taking the dregs of modernism, the unusable Herman Miller chair bases, the powdered box cushions, the warped and popped Rosewood veneers, the split fiberglass forms, curls of cracked bent plywood, busted Italian lamps to the dump in Fremont. They call it a "transfer station" I believe. All the refuse is thrown into the pit and this is pushed by a bulldozer into a deeper pit containing large dumptrucks which transfer it to another spot. The last time I was here, I was throwing hundreds of schoolhouse pull-down maps into the pit, like they were javelins. I had sold dozens, maybe a couple of hundred. It seemed that they supported the store. These were the leftovers. Places no one wanted. The dump is, of course infernal. The thirty-foot-deep pit glows red from the taillights of the trucks backed up to it.
Driving back, Will suggests we stop at the Humane Society. Just for a lark. We pull into its lot. There is no empty parking space. It is packed, on a weekday. People are bringing in dogs, or rescued cats. Most seem to be shopping for dogs, though I suspect one retiring lady is lingering near the wall of cats for a reason. The staff is harrassed but friendly. We see three adult pit bulls, all very sweet, a border collie who beckons calmly, and many and various excited yelpers. I say that we should come back when I am ready for a dog. So many of these are already spoken for, and so many people are there looking. It is heartening, but rather discomfiting to hear the emotions flow at each cage from each shopper. I discern a dim back room. In the first cage, almost too small to notice, there is a white puppy sitting next to a turd. He is almost all white, but there is a black patch over his eye. He is all unfocusable energy when I stop to talk to him.
His adoption, I see from the form, is pending. From my experience at garage sales I know that this means with enough effort, this puppy could be available again.
The receptionist calls the pending adopter. No--- His landlord says that insurance won't cover a tenant with a pit bull, and the puppy is supposedly a pit bull mix. When he was dropped off, the rescuers said they knew his mother was a pit bull. I look at the perfectly dogshaped infant. He is more of a Thurber dog than any other known breed. His snout seems more slender than a pit's, as do his shoulders, and his eyes are deep brown and very emotive. He does not have the stolid blunt Eastern European look of pits I have seen. He has a boxy head. Maybe he has some dalmatian. He is sort of like Peggy, the dalmatian I adopted in Little Rock, my faithful companion for roundabout four years, who rode in a truck from Arkansas to Seattle with me, and who died eleven years ago of old age complicated by euthanasia.
Unprepared to own a dog, nevertheless I find that I am determined. Some deep paternal instinct has been triggered. No force on earth could make me leave without him. I am handed the forms which might qualify me. It goes through. I get him and paying (140 dollars) the cashier asks what hisname will be. She named him Jason. Will asks "What's your favorite movie?". Then who is my favorite movie star and so on. Does Will think it suitable to name the dog Brad Pitt-Bull? How could one name a new being after a newsworthy person? I mean if I did love Brad Pitt immoderately enough to saddle the puppy with the name what would become of future developments? How could one trust that the actor wouldn't embarrass all the puppies named after him by something as peculiar as his recent embrace of everything his current bedmate endorses? What if I had been an Aniston partisan and had a dog that unfavorably reminded me that Mangelina Jolie was not the role model I had envisioned? When we come home and after short deliberation I name him Buddy.