Dog and the Man

Finally having a chance to read Various Positions, Ira Nadel's biography of Leonard Cohen (1996, rev. 2007). So far the most revealing passage has been:

As a child, Cohen had a small Scottish terrier, nicknamed Tinkie for the tinkle of his license and identification tags. His parents surprised him with the dog as a gift ... His mother had actually named the dog Tovarishch, but his father disliked the reminder of the site of the Russo-German treaties. Tinkie disappeared in a snowstorm fifteen years later and was found dead under a neighbor's porch the next spring. The dog had been one of Cohen's closest childhood companions; Cohen still keeps a picture of Tinkie in his Los Angles home. To this day he refuses to get another dog...

I don't think I need to read anymore of the biography after this: everything is there in essence.