ROACH - German Shepherd

[ROACH]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: #626262][scrolly:w(230),c(626262),as(padding-top: 3px; padding-bottom: 0px; font-family: arial; text-transform: lowercase; font-size:10px; letter-spacing: 0px; color: FFFFFF][/scrolly] g e n e r a l Birth Name: Unknown Nickname: Roach (that is what he named himself) Current Age: 4 Gender: Male Date of Birth: 25th of October a p p e a r a n c e Breed: German Shepherd Eye Color: Brown Coat Color: White Visual Reference: Occasional appearance if the elements treat him well, typical appearance f a m i l y Mate: N/A Pups: N/A l i k e s - Being alone - The rain - Children - Being in open spaces - Being out at night - Taunting territorial, domestic dogs s t r e n g t h s - Being agile and flexible (both physically and in ways he reacts to situations) - Thinking quickly in a sticky situation - Avoiding capture (there's no way he can hide easily with his coat color so he must rely on his wits and knowledge of the city) - Tracking - Surviving alone

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: #626262][scrolly:w(230),c(626262),as(padding-top: 3px; padding-bottom: 0px; font-family: times new roman; text-transform: lowercase; font-size: 15px; letter-spacing: 0px; color: FFFFFF)][/scrolly]m e m b e r Preferred Alias: Ashie Gender: Female Years of Roleplaying: 11+ years Referral: N/A Other Characters: N/A (but as a shameless character whore, I can guarantee more will follow) p e d i g r e e Sire: N/A Breed: German Shepherd Dam: N/A Breed: German Shepherd d i s l i k e s - Crowded streets - Loud people/cars/animals - Tight spaces with no evident way of escape (aka cages) - Collars - Being told he can't survive on his own - Other arrogant dogs - Not being successful at anything w e a k n e s s e s - Socializing with more than two dogs at a time - Hiding effectively in any setting that isn't completely white - Resisting the thrill of a good chase - Long distance running (has a constant upper respiratory infection) - Dealing with losing a fight or a hunt a s s o c i a t i o n Feral

p e r s o n a l i t y

sly - patient - lacks morals - arrogant - aloof

As a dog that's almost always been on his own, Roach has had to rely on himself rather than the aid of others. Not exactly the brawniest guy roaming the cracked concrete streets, Roach has had to come up with others ways to scratch up a meager existence. By being sly (or cunning, or whatever you want to call it), Roach has managed to maintain a fairly decent living on his own. This means that he's smart, he has an easy time reading others and if need be, he'll manipulate the hell out of someone until he gets what he wants. If this means that he has to steal food from the hands of an unsuspecting child that thought he was just being nice and run the risk of having a close run in with the child’s parent -he’ll do it.

There’s also not a lot of closed off spaces that can hold him, if he’s caught and sent to the pound he’ll just wait for someone to adopt him and escape then. He’s unscrupulously patient. He has nothing better to do but wait.

There are no boundaries to what Roach does and doesn’t do. It’s safe to say that he lacks morals that some dogs have. He’ll taunt just about anything (regardless of its size) and he’ll say he won’t do something and then turn right around and do it. He listens to no one and is a bit of a free soul, he dislikes being told that he can’t do things on his own, not to mention he’ll go out of his way just to prove someone wrong or piss someone off.

Unsurprisingly so, Roach is arrogant. There is not a single dog, cat, bird, human, or any other creature on the planet that is above him; domestic, feral, or stray- if you’re not Roach then you’re not good enough. Even when faced with the prospect of someone or something far larger than him with an equal amount of arrogance, he will refuse to back down. It’s all a matter of pride, or that’s at least what he likes to say. On the other hand, he really doesn’t care what others think about him so you can go ahead and judge him all you want, it won’t change a single thing.

Lastly, and most importantly, Roach is as aloof as they come. Lacking in a general stable (and healthy) trust of the rest of the canine and human race, he prefers to keep to himself and instead will glare at the world around him with a sneer, contemplating just how much better he is than the rest of the street rats. He is conspicuously uninvolved and uninterested, typically through distaste.

That being said, it’s fair to say that he’s really not the most friendly dog in the world unless he’s trying to con something off of you; it’s easy to describe him overall as ‘slimy’.

p h y s i q u e

When it comes to muscle power, it's safe to say that Roach was given the short end of the stick in that genetic area. Not to mention that when this physical discrepancy is paired with his recurring upper respiratory infection, he tends to look a bit like a walking skeleton under a poorly groomed shag carpet regardless of how much food he manages to catch or steal.

But don’t let his skinny, unhealthy appearance fool you, he’s quick on his feet and even quicker to think. For a dog with lungs that probably resemble a chain smoker’s lungs, he’s got a bit up and go to him when it’s most important. Of course, you can’t expect him to maintain this for very long if he’s got a flareup of his sickness.

He has a wiry white coat that’s almost always got a few mats in it. Occasionally he’ll let a kid or two take him in and he’ll tolerate their pampering for a bit and then call it quits and simply up and leave. So now that you have a walking, matted shag carpet skeleton, one must address his fairly slimy nose. He doesn’t care that it’s almost always runny, but he’s been told (with little effect to him) that it’s gross.

b i o g r a p h y

Born to an inattentive mother and absent father that Roach later learned was really just a sperm doner than a father, Roach didn’t really put a lot of thought into actively remembering his early years. When asked to conjure up his earliest memory he’ll just shrug and say it really wasn’t all that important anyway. But for those that must know, he was born in a dark alley with two other siblings that succumbed to the cold, unrelenting grip of an early winter on the busy city. Being without siblings to share the misfortune of a mostly milk dry mother was hardly a burden to Roach; it was simply more for him anyway.

He can’t exactly pinpoint the day his mother just up and left him, but he can vividly remember waking up to find that the extra body heat provided by his mother was gone. Assuming that she had just left for a few hours like she always did, he didn’t really think much of it and instead went back to sleep. He woke up a few hours later to the casual realization that she simply wasn’t coming back. He was at least a robust 6 months old at this point, and the idea of being alone didn’t exactly bother him, and like always, he just went with the flow.

When he first started wandering, he realized that the other few dogs that felt the need to approach him and ask him if he was lost always wanted a name. He couldn’t ever remember being called anything but ‘you’ and figured he needed to be called something and started introducing himself as Roach.

Approaching a year old, Roach was finally figuring out how to work the streets, and after narrowly avoiding capture many times, he finally found himself in the net of animal control and in the cage of the local pound. It didn’t take him long to decide that he hated being cooped up, but he also learned that if he behaved well, he was received better than those that did not. Luckily, being a puppy meant that he was adopted quicker than those that were not. He was brought to a home with two children and a single mother. For about three months he lived there and allowed himself to be well treated. Eventually, he got bored and simply ran away one day, not really caring that the children had grown accustomed to his presence and had treated him as well as two young children could (in fact, they had instilled a certain like of young humans in him -he still hated adults regardless of their gender).

He was two years old when he contracted a horrible upper respiratory infection. Never had he been so certain that he was going to die. He still isn’t quite sure how he didn’t die, but he knows for certain that the infection is always there and occasionally dormant.

Beyond that, he’s lived a normal life, occasionally ending up caught or almost caught, always on his own.