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" Once, as we walked down the street past a hair salon, three ladies ran outside to see us - a stylist wearing plastic gloves, a woman with curlers, clips and strips of aluminum foil in her hair and a woman with a picture phone ready to snap our pup's photo.

They all wanted to know one thing: "What is she?

" I felt obliged to come up with something fancy, since my previous answers just weren't compelling enough.

It all began at Chicago's Animal Care and Control facility, the city pound, where someone dumped a litter of sneezing, worm-infested puppies.

Paws Chicago took Ethel's litter and that's where my wife Robin and I spotted the cute, blue-eyed pup on Paws Chicago's Web site.

We adopted her and named her Ethel.

At the time we didn't know we had a King Daley shepherd.

The shelter called her an Australian shepherd mix because that's what she looked like, at first.

However, as she began to grow, it became clear that she probably wasn't an Aussie mix.

When people asked, "What is she?

" I'd answer, "She's a mutt." But I felt demeaned by patronizing responses like "Oh, how sweet." They'd say, "How wonderful" to adopt, but as they rolled their eyes, their body language communicated another message.

Clearly, they would be more impressed with a bagel, or some other designer breed.

So I created a designer breed of my own.

Since Ethel originally came from the ci...

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